Bill Clinton allegedly stormed into Vanity Fair newsroom, ‘threatened’ outlet to not run sex-trafficking stories against ‘good friend’ Jeffrey Epstein: new docs
Former President Bill Clinton allegedly stormed into the Vanity Fair newsroom and “threatened” staffers to not publish stories about sex-trafficking allegations against “his good friend” Jeffrey Epstein, according to newly unsealed court documents.
The claim about Clinton, included in the latest batch of files tied to Jeffrey Epstein that were released Thursday night, was mentioned by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre in a 2011 email exchange with a journalist from the Daily Mail, Sharon Churcher.
The scribe was advising Giuffre on whether to do an interview and sell a photo to the publication.
Churcher was offering to help her land a book deal at the time.
“When I was doing some research into VF yesterday, it does concern me what they could want to write about me considering that B.Clinton walked into VF and threatened them not to write sex-trafficing [sic] articles about his good friend J.E,” Giuffre wrote in the email.
It’s unclear where Giuffre learned of the alleged threats, and former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter told the Telegraph Thursday: “This categorically did not happen.”
A separate document revealed in Thursday’s drop names Clinton as someone who “traveled with Jeffrey Epstein and [his madam] Ghislaine Maxwell and may have information about Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual trafficking conduct.”
A Clinton spokesperson referred The Post to a 2019 statement that said the former president “knows nothing about the terrible crimes” Epstein pleaded guilty to and was accused of and that he hadn’t spoken to the known pedophile “in well over a decade.”
Follow along with everything we’ve found out about Jeffrey Epstein and his associates.
In the same statement, the spokesman said Clinton took a total of four trips on Epstein’s plane in 2002 and 2003 in connection to work for the Clinton Foundation.
The newest trove of files dropped a day after an initial batch of more than 40 court papers were made public — and featured dozens of rich, powerful, and famous names who once socialized or worked with the late pedophile.
Clinton is just one on a lengthy list of high-profile names — from Prince Andrew to late scientist Stephen Hawking — who have already garnered a mention in the files released late Wednesday.
Sources said more documents are set to be filed Friday and possibly Monday, for a total of 240 — and are expected to name more than 170 Epstein associates, ex-employees, and victims in total.
What we know about the Jeffrey Epstein list of 170 associates
- On Wednesday, documents were released naming 170 associates of accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The list included Michael Jackson, magician David Copperfield, Stephen Hawking, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and former President Bill Clinton — who an Epstein victim said “likes them young, referring to girls.”
- Disgraced royal Prince Andrew, a known friend of Epstein, was named in the documents and was previously sued by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, who accused Andrew of sexual misconduct toward her. According to one royal family expert, the Firm “will stand beside” the Duke of York “no matter what.”
- Epstein’s former attorney and friend Alan Dershowitz defended the late multimillionaire sex offender’s associates, saying: “None of us knew about his private life that he kept so secret.” Dershowitz, who is on the list, added that no one should be automatically convicted in the court of public opinion simply for showing up in court documents.
- Epstein’s brother, Mark Epstein, told The Post that the ex-business mogul said he could have upended the 2016 election over what he knew about both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton: “Here’s a direct quote: ‘If I said what I know about both candidates, they’d have to cancel the election.’ That’s what Jeffrey told me in 2016.”
- Only some of the 170 names and their relationships to Epstein have been released. The remainder of the documents will likely become public record throughout the next week.
The full cache of documents, ordered released by Manhattan federal Judge Loretta Preska last month, is part of a since-settled defamation lawsuit that Giuffre brought against Maxwell in 2015.
Thousands of pages of documents from the lawsuit had already been made public, but some sections and names had been redacted because of privacy concerns.
Among the claims included in Wednesday’s document dump were allegations that Prince Andrew participated in an “underage orgy.”
One woman, only identified as “Jane Doe 3,” testified in a 2014 deposition that she was “forced to have sexual relations with this Prince when she was a minor” — including at Maxwell’s London apartment, in New York, and “on Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands (in an orgy with numerous other underaged girls).”
Another Epstein victim, Johanna Sjoberg, who worked as a masseuse for the financier, said in a 2016 deposition that the now-disgraced royal groped her breast as she sat on his lap in Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse in 2001.
Elsewhere in the same deposition, Sjoberg also testified that Epstein once said former President Bill Clinton “likes them young” and the late sex offender had once suggested stopping his private jet at one of future President Donald Trump’s casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Sjoberg said she once met Michael Jackson at Epstein’s Palm Beach, Florida, home, but that nothing untoward happened with the late pop icon.
And she testified about attending a dinner at one of Epstein’s homes where magician David Copperfield did magic tricks before asking if she was aware “that girls were getting paid to find other girls,” according to the filing.
