Timeline: Bill Clinton's interactions with Jeffrey Epstein
Here's a look at the connections between Epstein and the former president.
As lawmakers press former President Bill Clinton about this relationship with the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, here's a look at the connections over the years between Clinton and Epstein, as well as Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's longtime associate who was convicted on sex trafficking charges in 2021.
No Epstein survivor or associate has ever made a public allegation of wrongdoing or inappropriate behavior by Clinton in connection with his prior relationship with Epstein, and Clinton has maintained that he did not associate with Epstein after accusations of wrongdoing came to light.
1992
According to federal election records, Bill Clinton's presidential campaign received a $1,000 donation from Epstein in 1992. Seven years later, Epstein contributed $20,000 to a joint fundraising committee with the Democratic Party and then-Senate hopeful Hillary Clinton. The Clinton Foundation has acknowledged it received one donation of $25,000 from an Epstein-related foundation in 2006.
1993-2001
Epstein visited the White House multiple times during Clinton's presidency, signing in as a visitor on 17 occasions between 1993-1995, according to White House visitor logs obtained and reviewed by ABC News. Epstein and Maxwell, the daughter of the late media mogul Robert Maxwell, were photographed at at least one White House event with the then-president.
In sworn depositions submitted to the House Oversight Committee in January 2026, Bill Clinton says that Epstein "may very well have attended" White House events during Clinton's two terms in office and may have been among the "tens of thousands" of people photographed with him. But Clinton said he did "not recall encountering Mr. Epstein, or any specific interaction with him, while in office."
Both Clintons also state they could not recall the circumstances of how they met Maxwell, but remember that she later "began a personal relationship with a mutual friend."
"To be clear, I had no idea of Mr. Epstein's or Ms. Maxwell's criminal activities," former President Clinton wrote. "And, irrespective of any intent either may have ever had, I did not take any action for the purpose of helping them to avoid any type of scrutiny."
"During my tenure in public office, from 1993 to 2013, I never had any responsibility for, or involvement with, the Department of Justice's handling of the Epstein and Maxwell investigations or prosecutions," Hillary Clinton wrote in her declaration.
2002
After leaving the White House, Clinton met with Epstein once in Clinton's Harlem office and once at Epstein's apartment, according to a 2019 social media post by Clinton spokesperson Angel Urena made shortly after Epstein's arrest.
"He had one meeting with Epstein in his Harlem office in 2002, and around the same time made one brief visit to Epstein's New York apartment with a staff member and his security detail," the post said.
"President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York," Urena wrote. "He's not spoken to Epstein in well over a decade, and has never been to Little St. James Island, Epstein's ranch in New Mexico, or his residence in Florida."
2002/2003
Flight logs from Epstein's private jets show that Bill Clinton and his entourage took four international trips in 2002 and 2003 on the financier's Boeing 727 to locations including Bangkok, Brunei, Rwanda, Russia, China and elsewhere, as part of what Clinton has described as trips for the Clinton Foundation, the nonprofit humanitarian organization he founded after he left the presidency in 2001.
Logs for Epstein's private jets show that Bill Clinton is listed on 26 total flight "legs" on Epstein's planes -- though many of those legs were parts of the same international trips.
Clinton's last known trip on Epstein's plane was in November 2003, according to the logs. The first reports that Epstein was under investigation in Florida for alleged sexual exploitation of minors surfaced in 2005.
None of the flight records from Epstein's planes that have surfaced in litigation indicate that Clinton was ever aboard for a trip to Epstein's island.
In her interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche last summer, Maxwell said that, as a friend of Bill Clinton's, she had encouraged Epstein to support Clinton's nonprofit.
"He supported me to help them," Maxwell said of Epstein. "I was part of the beginning process of the Clinton Global Initiative. And that was something that I helped with and that was me, and Epstein may have helped me help them. And in that context, he may well have involved himself, but only in the context of something that I was trying to do."
Maxwell told Blanche it was she, and not Epstein, who had the relationship with Bill Clinton.
"President Clinton was my friend, not Epstein's friend," Maxwell said. "President Clinton liked me, and we got along terribly well. But I never saw that warmth ... with Mr. Epstein."
"Do you know one way or the other, whether their relationship continued without you, like, when you kind of moved on past Mr. Epstein?" Blanche asked.
"I don't think they had a relationship even when I was there," Maxwell replied. "I didn't see President Clinton being interested in Epstein. He was just a rich guy with a plane."
Asked by Blanche if Clinton had ever gone to Epstein's island, Maxwell replied, "He never, absolutely never went. And I can be sure of that because there's no way he would have gone. I don't believe there's any way that he would've gone to the island had I not been there. Because I don't believe he had an independent friendship, if you will, with Epstein."
Though records do not show that Clinton was ever aboard a flight to Epstein's island, Epstein survivor Virginia Roberts Giuffre reportedly told the U.K.'s Mail on Sunday newspaper in 2011 that she had met Bill Clinton on two occasions, including once on Epstein's island. She claimed that she dined on the island with Epstein, Clinton, Maxwell, and "two young brunettes," the paper reported.
Giuffre stressed, according to the newspaper's report, that she was not "lent out" to Clinton and that she did not witness any interaction between Clinton and the other women she claimed were there.
Giuffre reportedly told the Mail that she queried Epstein about the nature of his relationship with Clinton, and that Epstein told her that Clinton "owes me some favors."
Giuffre continued to maintain that she had met Clinton on the island, according to records of her defamation case against Maxwell, which was settled in 2017. Maxwell and Epstein, however, both long asserted that Clinton never visited Little St. James.
2003
Epstein's now-infamous 50th birthday book, which was compiled by Maxwell in celebration of Epstein's milestone birthday, included a letter apparently signed by Bill Clinton, according to a copy that was released in full by the House Oversight Committee.
The former president is listed in the table of contents under "Friends" and the letter attributed to Clinton is handwritten.
It reads, in full:
"Jeffrey -- Happy 50th -- It's reassuring isn't it, to have lasted as long, across all the years of learning and knowing, adventures and [illegible], and also to have your childlike curiosity, the drive to make a difference and the solace of friends -- Bill Clinton"
In October of 2002, a few months before Epstein's 50th birthday, Clinton was quoted in a New York magazine article, through a spokesperson, as saying, "Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of twenty-first-century science."
Four years later, Epstein was arrested on charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution in Florida.
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