WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Bill Clinton featured prominently in the first batch of files released Friday by the Justice Department stemming from its investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as the White House sought to shift the focus of the highly anticipated documents from President Donald Trump.
Several photos of Clinton were among the thousands of documents made public. Some showed him on a private plane, including one with a woman whose face was red from the photo sitting on his lap. Another photo shows him in a swimming pool with Epstein’s confidante, the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, and a person whose face was also red.
Another photo shows Clinton in a hot tub with a red-faced woman. The files do not say when the photos were taken and there was little context around them.
Clinton’s association with Epstein and Maxwell in the late 1990s and early 2000s is well documented and the images released Friday are just a portion of the “several hundred thousand” documents that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said are linked to the investigation. Yet the images could complicate Democratic efforts to keep Trump tied to the Epstein files, an issue that has resonated strongly with Trump’s base despite the president’s efforts to urge his supporters to come forward.
After the photos emerged, several White House officials, including press secretary Karoline Leavitt and top aide Steven Cheung, posted on social media highlighting them. Trump did not address the issue as he left the White House late Friday on his way to a speech in North Carolina.
In a statement, Clinton spokesman Angel Ureña said the Epstein investigation “is not about Bill Clinton.”
“There are two types of people here,” he said. “The first group knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came out. The second group continued the relationships after that. We are in the first. No amount of stopping people in the second group is going to change that.”
Clinton has never been accused of misconduct by Epstein’s known victims.
Long before the Department of Justice released the case files on Jeffrey Epstein that included several photos of Clinton, Republicans had focused on the former president and his association with the wealthy financier.
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee had denied both Bill and Hillary Clinton depositions earlier this year, but received a response that the Clintons wanted to provide a written statement of what “little information” they had about Epstein.
The Republican chairman of the committee, Rep. James Comer, demanded that they appear for testimony in person and threatened to start a contempt of Congress proceedings if they did not do so.
Several former presidents have voluntarily testified before Congress, but none have been forced to do so.
When Clinton was president, Epstein visited the White House several times, visitor logs show. After leaving office, Epstein helped with some of the former president’s philanthropy. Clinton flew on Epstein’s private jet several times, including on a humanitarian trip to Africa with actors Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker in 2002.
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Associated Press writer Stephen Groves in Washington contributed to this report