BILL Clinton has admitted Jeffrey Epstein was “odd” and that he wishes he’d never met the pedophile financier.
The former president, 78, addresses his controversial links with Epstein in his upcoming memoir, Citizen, out next week.
Clinton admits in the book that he flew on Epstein’s private jet in 2002 and 2003.
He claims Epstein offered the use of his plane in support of Clinton’s foundation and they spoke about economics and politics.
After that, Clinton says the pair had only two “brief” meetings, in Clinton’s office in Harlem and Epstein’s New York home.
But he dismisses allegations that he ever visited Little Saint James, Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands.
“I had always thought Epstein was odd but had no inkling of the crimes he was committing,” Clinton writes.
“He hurt a lot of people, but I knew nothing about it, and by the time he was first arrested in 2005, I had stopped contact with him. I’ve never visited his island.”
Clinton points to the Secret Service’s “extraordinary” decision to say in 2016 that he had never waived protection and they had never been to Epstein’s Caribbean island.
“The bottom line is, even though it allowed me to visit the work of my foundation, traveling on Epstein’s plane was not worth the years of questioning afterward,” Clinton adds.
“I wish I had never met him.”
Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre previously claimed she met Clinton on Epstein’s island twice but was never “lent out” to him.
In a May 2016 deposition unsealed earlier this year, Giuffre said that Epstein’s madam Ghislaine Maxwell may have exaggerated a story about flying Clinton to Epstein’s island on a helicopter.
Asked if she had ever been on the helicopter with Clinton and Maxwell, Giuffre answered, “No.”
However, she did not deny meeting Clinton on the island during the deposition.
Clinton became embroiled in the Epstein scandal after it emerged that he had flown on Epstein’s private jet to a meeting in Africa to discuss AIDS policy.
The pair were accompanied by Hollywood actors Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker during the trip.
Clinton’s comments in his memoir echo a statement released through a spokesman in 2019.
“In 2002 and 2003, President Clinton took a total of four trips on Jeffrey Epstein’s airplane: one to Europe, one to Asia, and two to Africa, which included stops in connection with the work of the Clinton Foundation,” the statement read.
“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.
“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.”
In 2009, Epstein pleaded guilty and was convicted by a Florida state court of procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute.
Following a controversial plea deal, he served 13 months in custody with extensive work released.
When Epstein was arrested again on federal sex trafficking charges in July 2019, it emerged he kept a bizarre portrait of Clinton in a blue dress and red high heels at his Upper East Side mansion.
It showed Clinton draped over a chair in the office in an apparent nod to the former president’s notorious tryst with intern Monica Lewinsky.
Epstein died in his jail cell at 66 in August 2019. The death was ruled a suicide by hanging.
Epstein’s lawyers disputed the medical examiner’s ruling, and there has been widespread public skepticism about the true cause of death.
Addressing the Lewinsky scandal in the book, Clinton admits that he is haunted by the affair to this day.
“I live with it all the time,” he writes.
“Monica’s done a lot of good and important work over the last few years in her campaign against bullying, earning her well-deserved recognition in the United States and abroad. I wish her nothing but the best.”
