Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Clinton’s curious friendship: Late pedophile hung portrait of cross-dressing Bill in his $88m Manhattan lair, made 17 visits to the White House, and flew president 26 times on his private jet

Jeffrey Epstein’s influential friends and elite acquaintances are being unmasked for the first time in newly unsealed court filings.

But one name stands out among the glittering array of politicians, Hollywood stars and royalty – that of William Jefferson Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States.

Clinton has been linked to the late child sex predator for decades and features more than 70 times in documents finally made public this week by New York judge Loretta Preska.

The 77-year-old Democrat claims the pair were barely buddies, denies knowledge of Epstein’s sex trafficking network, and insists he never set foot on Little Saint James – nicknamed ‘Pedo Island’ and the setting for multiple bouts of sexual abuse.

However, as DailyMail.com documents, their relationship stretches back to Clinton’s days in the White House and the two men were once close enough for the former leader of the free world to accept repeated trips on Epstein’s private jet.

Newly unredacted files included in the released documents this week have also unveiled the extraordinary claim that the president once even went as far as to ‘threaten’ a magazine not to write ‘sex trafficking articles’ about his ‘good friend.’ 

NEW DOCS, NEW QUESTIONS

The specter of Jeffrey Epstein returned to haunt the Clintons this week when Bill’s name appeared more than 70 times on newly unsealed court papers.

The former president was among dozens of Epstein associates unmasked in a vast document drop from the 2015 Ghislaine Maxwell-Virginia Roberts Giuffre defamation case.

According to Giuffre’s lawyers, Bubba was a ‘key person in the lives’ of the dead financier and his former lover and the trio enjoyed a ‘close relationship’. 

Giuffre’s attorneys even sought to depose him. 

In one especially incendiary filing, a 2016 deposition from another Epstein victim, Johanna Sjoberg, she recalls the dead predator telling her ‘Clinton likes them young, referring to girls’.

Asked what she knew about Epstein’s friendship with Clinton, Sjoberg said: ‘I knew he had dealings with Bill Clinton.’

However, she never met Clinton and never saw him on Little Saint James, her testimony added.

In another document Giuffre makes the colorful claim that Clinton once intervened to stop a magazine expose about Epstein.

Maxwell’s lawyers asked Giuffre, formerly known as Roberts, about a 2011 email exchange she had with a reporter friend in which they discussed the merits of selling her now-infamous photo with Prince Andrew to Vanity Fair.

As they spar over her recollection of the messages, Giuffre replies: ‘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 trafficking articles about his good friend JE.’

Since the papers were released former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter has said the incident ‘categorically did not happen’. 

In her own deposition, Maxwell, 50, said the claim that Clinton had a meal on Epstein’s island was ‘100 percent false.’ Clinton denies any wrongdoing

CLINTON IN THE FRAME 

They say a picture speaks 1,000 words.

But anyone who stumbled across Jeffrey Epstein’s peculiar, life-size portrait of a crossdressing Bill Clinton would more likely be left speechless.

The bizarro artwork depicted the former Commander in Chief lounging on a chair in the Oval Office in blood red heels and a figure-hugging blue dress. 

His kooky outfit was strikingly similar to one worn by wife Hillary at a 2009 gala dinner for Kennedy Center Honorees.

The painting was called ‘Parsing Bill’ and was created in 2012 by fledgling Australian-American artist Petrina Ryan-Kleid.

It’s not clear whether Epstein owned the original or a print, but it was spotted hanging up inside the pedophile’s $56million New York townhouse in October of that year.

‘It was absolutely Bill Clinton. It was shocking – it was definitely a painting of him,’ a source revealed to DailyMail.com when we revealed the portrait’s existence in 2019.

‘It was a very provocative, sexual picture. He was wearing heels, a blue dress and his hand was in a weird position.’

Quite why Epstein, who hanged himself in prison in August 2019, would have such a lurid likeness of the former President in his home has been open to much speculation.

‘Imagine if I knew some horrible dark secrets about you and you came over to my house and I have a giant painting of you,’ Joe Rogan joked about it on his podcast.

‘Right when you walk into the front door, of you, in a dress, and I’m like, “Hey buddy”.’

HIDDEN IN PLANE SIGHT

Epstein went from university dropout to mercurial money manager, acquiring all the trappings of a billionaire playboy, from majestic homes in New York, New Mexico, and Palm Beach, Florida, to his own Caribbean island.

Along the way, the now-notorious pedophile acquired scores of influential friends, many of whom were listed in his ‘little black book’ of contacts, where he noted down 20 numbers and addresses for Clinton. 

And despite repeatedly distancing himself from the child predator and his crimes, Clinton was once close enough to accept dozens of flights on Epstein’s private jet, notoriously nicknamed the Lolita Express.

Flights logs show that Clinton flew on the Boeing 727 tri-jet on 26 occasions, traveling to an array of exotic locations including Brunei, Norway, Russia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, the Azores, Africa, Belgium, China and New York.

DailyMail.com published never-before-seen images of the 42nd President of the United States receiving a neck and shoulder massage from Epstein victim Chauntae Davies during a stopover in 2002.

Davis, then a 22-year-old massage therapist who claimed she was recruited into Epstein’s circle by Ghislaine Maxwell before being raped and abused, insisted that Clinton was ‘charming and sweet’ on the humanitarian trip to Africa that also included Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker. 

‘Although the image looks bizarre, President Clinton was a perfect gentleman during the trip and I saw absolutely no foul play involving him,’ she recalled.

Clinton’s camp insists he took a ‘total of four trips’ from 2002 to 2003 on Epstein’s aircraft, which last flew in 2016 and is slowly corroding at an airfield in Brunswick, Georgia.

Staffers and Secret Service agents were present each time, they say.

WEST WING REGULAR

Bill Clinton has owned up to six meetings with Epstein dating back to 2002.

These include the four flights on Epstein’s plane, a visit to his Harlem office and a brief appearance at the pedophile’s New York home.

However, as DailyMail.com previously revealed, Epstein enjoyed extraordinary access to the White House throughout the Clinton administration, nearly a decade earlier.

The deep-pocketed predator stopped by the West Wing just a month after Clinton’s inauguration in January 1993 – the first of 17 visits in three years.

During his visits he took eight different women with him. The logs identify them as Maxwell, who at the time was 32, and three other girlfriends, Celina Midelfart, then 21, Eva Andersson-Dubin, 33, and Francis Jardine, who was believed to be in her 20s.

The four other women who also appear in the logs are named as Jennifer Garrison, Shelley Gafni, Jennifer Driver and Lyoubov Orlova. 

Visitor logs confirm he was signed in by a person named ‘Rubin’, a possible reference to Robert Rubin, who became director of the National Economic Council when Clinton took office and Treasury Secretary in 1995.

Epstein returned on September 29 to attend a reception organized by the White House Historical Association after he donated $10,000 to help renovate the building.

It was one of the earliest instances of Epstein using philanthropy to gain access to powerful men, a tactic he would deploy extensively to negate his 2008 conviction in Florida for having sex with underage girls.

Photos from the event show Epstein and Clinton shaking hands with both men smiling broadly.

The bulk of Epstein’s visits came in 1994 when he visited on a dozen occasions, meeting a variety of aides including Mark Middleton, who was a special assistant to the President and also flew on the Lolita Express, according to flight logs.

Epstein visited Clinton just once in 1995, on January 28, and he was again signed in by Middleton.

AIDE’S GRUESOME SUICIDE

Middleton’s curious cameo doesn’t end there.

Cops say he took his own life in 2022 but the gory suicide raised more questions than answers.

The married father-of-two, who worked for his family’s HVAC business after leaving politics, was found hanging from a tree on farmland in Perryville, Arkansas.

‘I could see that he had a gunshot wound to the chest and that he had a knot tied in an extension cord that was around his neck and it was attached to the limb directly above him,’ noted a deputy.

A search of Middleton’s BMW turned up three boxes of buckshot and a gun case – but no weapon. The 59-year-old’s death was nonetheless recorded as a suicide.

In 1996, one year after leaving the White House, Middleton was accused of abusing his access to impress business clients and was barred from the executive mansion without senior approval.

According to the Arkansas Times, Middleton’s family said he was suffering from depression when he died.

A number of Clinton’s former associates have perished over the years in unexpected circumstances, including deputy White House counsel Vince Foster.

His 1993 death from a self-inflicted gunshot was ruled a suicide but sparked a slew of conspiracy theories about the involvement of the Clintons.

WARNED TO STAY AWAY

Doug Band, Clinton’s onetime chief advisor, poured fuel on the Epstein-Bubba fire when he came forward in 2020 to say the ex-Prez did indeed visit Little St. James.

Band said he repeatedly warned his boss to steer clear of Epstein and his warped madam Ghislaine Maxwell, who was particularly close with Chelsea Clinton and attended her 2010 wedding.

‘Ghislaine had access to yachts and nice homes,’ he told Vanity Fair. ‘Chelsea needed that.’

Band insisted that Clinton had visited Epstein’s Caribbean retreat in 2003, despite the Clinton camp’s repeated claims to the contrary.

He told the magazine he was so wary about the invite that he excused himself from the trip.

A Clinton spokesman dismissed the allegation and characterized Band as a bitter ex-staffer seeking to profit on his former connections.

Band was just 22 and doing a law degree at Georgetown University when he landed an unpaid internship in the White House midway through Clinton’s first term.

When Clinton left office in 2001 Band went with him and helped to resurrect the Clinton brand that was tarnished by controversial pardons and the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.

Band became semi-famous in the process, enjoying a brief romance with Naomi Campbell, before falling out with Chelsea in 2011.

A newly unsealed deposition suggests he may have been especially close to Maxwell, who is serving 20 years for grooming young girls for Epstein.

Asked if they were ever in a romantic relationship, the disgraced socialite told Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre’s lawyers: ‘We are talking about adult consensual relationships, it’s off the record.’