A longtime aide and confidante of former President Bill Clinton claimed to Vanity Fair magazine this week that, despite his denials, Clinton indeed visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island, Little St. James, which reportedly served as a hub for Epstein’s global sex trafficking operation.
“Doug Band, who served as Clinton’s right-hand man for years after he left the White House, told Vanity Fair the 42nd president visited Little St. James, the Caribbean island where Epstein allegedly trafficked underage victims,” Fox News reported late Wednesday.
Band claims that “Clinton made the trip in January 2003, one of dozens of times he flew aboard Epstein’s private jet, the ‘Lolita Express,'” according to the New York Post. “Though ignorant at the time of Epstein’s sex crimes, Band said he knew the financier was bad news ever since Clinton’s now-infamous 2002 trip aboard Epstein’s so-called Lolita Express.”
The 2002 trip is the best-known instance of Epstein and Clinton traveling together, revealed in a series of flight logs, made public as part of the ongoing criminal and civil litigation against Epstein and his associates.
Band, whom Vanity Fair notes, could be an unreliable witness — a “shady self-dealer,” per Fox News — claims his job, after Clinton left the White House, was to rehabilitate the president’s image, and that he is privy to a number of secrets about the former president’s extra-curricular activities, including his dealings with Epstein.
“The lengthy piece in Vanity Fair reveals unflattering details about both the Clintons and Band, who is portrayed as a shady self-dealer. After starting his corporate advisory firm, Teneo, Band converted donors from the Clinton Foundation, which he was on the board of, into clients,” Fox News notes.
Allegations of Clinton’s participation in Epstein’s sex trafficking operation surface routinely, according to Insider, but the former president has categorically denied that his long term friendship with the Wall Street bigwig ever involved participating in Epstein’s sex trafficking operation.
The most recent allegations came in late August, after an interview with Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre was unsealed. In it, Giuffre claimed she saw Clinton on the island with two women, both alleged victims of Epstein’s sex trafficking operation.
“I remember asking Jeffrey what’s Bill Clinton doing here kind of thing, and he laughed it off and said ‘well he owes me a favor,” Giuffre said in her interview.
“He never told me what favors they were,” Giuffre continued, clarifying her story. “I never knew. I didn’t know if he was serious. It was just a joke. He told me a long time ago that everyone owes him favors. They’re all in each other’s pockets.”
At the time, a Clinton spokesperson told media that Bill had “not spoken to Epstein in well over a decade” and that Clinton and Epstein fell out “well before [Epstein’s] crimes came to light.”
The same spokesperson reaffirmed Clinton’s denial, telling the Insider that “[Giuffre’s] story keeps changing, the facts don’t. President Clinton has never been to the island.”
Epstein, who was convicted of sex trafficking several years ago, committed suicide last year while being held pending a second criminal trial on new allegations. His closest associate, alleged former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, is currently being held in jail in New York pending her own trial on charges she aided and abetted Epstein and facilitated aspects of his criminal enterprise.