This was posted by Max Brantley, retired editor in chief of Arkansas Times, very knowledgeable about Bill Clinton.
Since the House Oversight Committee dropped over 20,000 files from the Epstein estate this week, there have not only been renewed suspicions about Donald Trump - Bill Clinton has also re-entered the chat. Even though I’ve seen a lot of Dems say they don’t care if Clinton gets taken down with Trump, (including me), after digging around all afternoon, I don’t think it’s very likely to happen.
The Clinton-Epstein connection looks damning at first glance.
White House visitor logs show Epstein visited 17 times between 1993 and 1995. Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane 26 times. There’s photos of them together. But when you dig into the actual documents instead of the viral claims, a different picture emerges. One where Clinton’s real connection was to Ghislaine Maxwell through social circles, and Epstein was just the rich guy with the plane.
Here’s what actually happened. Maxwell arrived in New York in the early 1990s as the daughter of British publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell. She already had connections to elite social circles from her father’s world. She met Jeffrey Epstein shortly after her father’s mysterious death in 1991, when she was reportedly looking for a fresh start and Epstein provided the money she needed to maintain her lifestyle. She introduced Epstein to wealthy and powerful people. That was the transaction.
So, let’s talk about those 17 White House visits that get cited as proof Clinton and Epstein were best friends. Visitor logs show Epstein wasn’t there to see Clinton. He was meeting with Mark Middleton, a Clinton aide whose job was literally maintaining contact with the president’s donors. Middleton authorized at least seven of those visits. This wasn’t two buddies hanging out. This was a fundraiser meeting with the fundraising guy. Epstein had donated to Clinton’s campaign and to the White House Historical Association. That bought him access to an aide, not to the Oval Office.
The connection between Clinton and Epstein’s social circle came later, after Clinton left office in 2001. Here’s the part people forget about early 2000s political reality. Most politicians weren’t millionaires yet. Clinton left office with legal debt from impeachment proceedings. When he started the Clinton Foundation and needed to do international humanitarian work, he didn’t have a private jet budget.
Doug Band, Clinton’s chief counselor and the architect of the Clinton Global Initiative, arranged for Epstein’s plane to be used for foundation trips in 2002 and 2003. The 26 flights that show up in the logs were actually four trips: one to Europe, one to Asia, and two to Africa for AIDS relief and economic development. Multiple staff members and Secret Service agents were on every leg of every trip. The work was documented by the foundation. This isn’t disputed.
What’s also documented is that Maxwell was on those flights. She was listed in the logs as “GM.” She attended Clinton Foundation events. She eventually became friendly enough with the Clintons to attend Chelsea’s wedding in 2010 - after Epstein had already pleaded guilty in Florida to procuring sex from a minor. That’s the judgment call that’s actually worth criticizing. But I assume no one knew yet the depth of Epstein’s crimes or her involvement.
The flight logs show Clinton stopped using Epstein’s plane in 2003, two years before Epstein’s first arrest. According to Doug Band in a 2020 Vanity Fair interview, he got bad vibes from Epstein during the Africa trip and advised Clinton to cut ties. Band said Epstein made ridiculous claims, like that he’d invented the derivatives market, and Band didn’t want Clinton associated with him. Whether Clinton listened immediately or not, the documented flights ended in 2003.
Now let’s talk about what makes the Clinton connection different from others in these files. Trump has been directly accused in documents im]n this week’s data dump. Emails show Epstein writing about Trump: “Of course he knew about the girls” and referencing incidents at Mar-a-Lago. Prince Andrew was accused by Virginia Giuffre in detailed testimony, settled a lawsuit, and lost his royal duties. Alan Dershowitz was named in victim statements. These are allegations with specifics: dates, locations, circumstances, victims naming them directly.
With Clinton, there’s proximity to evil but no accusation of evil.
Not one victim in five years of document releases has accused Clinton of anything. Multiple people under oath - including Epstein himself in a 2010 deposition and the pilot who flew the plane - said Clinton never visited the private island. The Secret Service found no records of Clinton visiting Little St. James.
The “28 island visits” claim exists nowhere in any official document. No flight log. No victim testimony. No deposition. It just started circulating online because it sounded plausible, and Trump repeated it. That’s how modern conspiracy theories work. Someone says something inflammatory, it gets repeated enough times, and suddenly it becomes “everybody knows” when nobody actually has proof.
The real scandal here is simpler and more boring than the conspiracy version. Clinton had terrible judgment about his associates. He accepted help from a billionaire who turned out to be a monster because his foundation needed resources. He maintained a social connection to Maxwell longer than he should have because she was connected to his daughter and his foundation work. His aide Doug Band eventually tried to bar Maxwell from Clinton events in 2011 when the allegations became public, but by then she’d already attended Chelsea’s wedding.
By the time Clinton stepped on Epstein’s plane - he had already been through an impeachment for an inappropriate relationship. It’s highly unlikely that he used one of his foundation’s trips to let it all hang loose with his staff and other people he did not know very well. The actual question is why this particular rumor has so much staying power when the documents don’t support it. Maybe it’s because Clinton is already associated with sexual misconduct from his own actions with Monica Lewinsky and others. Maybe it’s because people don’t trust powerful men to tell the truth about powerful men. Maybe it’s because the Epstein case is so horrifying we want to believe everyone connected to him must have been part of it.
Or maybe it’s because people, like me, don’t do any research before they post photos like the one in the post right before this one.
That photo is real and it does look bad. But here’s the important context: Chauntae Davies herself, the Epstein victim in the photo, said Clinton was “a perfect gentleman” and she “saw absolutely no foul play involving him.” The massage happened during a refueling stop in Portugal during that documented 2002 Africa humanitarian trip. Maxwell suggested it as a joke when Clinton complained about stiffness from sleeping in his chair, and Davies said everyone laughed but Maxwell insisted.
Davies has been very clear in multiple interviews that while Epstein raped and abused her repeatedly for four years, nothing happened with Clinton on that trip. She actually said it was “the single most amazing moment of my life” and she had a “false belief that the abuse had stopped” during the Africa trip because Epstein didn’t assault her while Clinton and the others were there.
This is exactly the kind of thing that looks terrible in a photo but the actual victim says wasn’t misconduct. It’s awkward, it shows terrible judgment about who Clinton was traveling with, but it’s not evidence of Clinton participating in Epstein’s crimes. The victim herself has never accused Clinton of anything.
So - yeah - my bad.
#ratcepsteinfiles
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