Bill Clinton was friends with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
President Trump, not so much.
“Well, I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him,” Trump said Tuesday in the Oval Office before holding talks with Amir Tamim bin Hamad al Thani of Qatar. “I mean, people in Palm Beach knew him. He was a fixture in Palm Beach. I had a falling out with him a long time ago. I don’t think I’ve spoken to him for 15 years. I wasn’t a fan.”
Trump added: “I was not — yeah, a long time ago. I’d say maybe 15 years. I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you. I was not a fan of his.”
The president also defended his Labor Secretary, Alex Acosta, who as U.S. Attorney in Miami oversaw a 2008 plea deal that let Epstein mostly off the hook on numerous charges of having sex with underaged girls.
“So I feel very badly, actually, for Secretary Acosta because I’ve known him as being somebody that works so hard and has done such a good job. I feel very badly about that whole situation. But we’re going to be looking at that and looking at it very closely,” Trump said.
In a series of posts on Twitter on Tuesday, Acosta also defended himself.
“The crimes committed by Epstein are horrific, and I am pleased that NY prosecutors are moving forward with a case based on new evidence,” Acosta wrote. “With the evidence available more than a decade ago, federal prosecutors insisted that Epstein go to jail, register as a sex offender and put the world on notice that he was a sexual predator.”
In his latest tweet in the series, Acosta wrote, “Now that new evidence and additional testimony is available, the NY prosecution offers an important opportunity to more fully bring him to justice.”
As for Trump’s friendship with Epstein, he did say in 2002: “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it – Jeffrey enjoys his social life,” New York magazine reported.
But as Trump said Tuesday, that ended 15 years ago.
Clinton, meanwhile, has been deeply connected with Epstein for years. According to flight records, Bill Clinton flew 26 times on Epstein’s plane, dubbed the “Lolita Express” because there were often young girls on board. In addition, Fox News reported he flew without Secret Service at least five times. And one alleged victim of Epstein’s, Virginia Giuffre, has said in an affidavit that Clinton was also present on Little St. James Island, Epstein’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
“Bill Clinton once described Jeffrey Epstein as ‘both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist,'” Vanity Fair reported on Tuesday. “He provided ‘insights and generosity,’ the former president told New York through a spokesperson in 2002, during a trip the two took aboard his private jet on a humanitarian tour of Africa that also included actors Chris Tucker and the now-disgraced Kevin Spacey. Clinton took several trips on Epstein’s private Boeing 727 jet, flight logs show. But after Epstein’s arrest on sex trafficking charges, the former president has drawn a line in the sand. “President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York,” a spokesperson said in a statement, downplaying Clinton’s interactions with Epstein and emphasizing that he was accompanied by staff and Secret Service on every leg of the trips.”
Expect all this to play out during the 2020 presidential campaign.
