BuzzFeed review finds scant evidence linking Bill Clinton to Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged crimes

Carlo Allegri / Reuters Over roughly the past month, coverage of Bill Clinton’s travels with financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have made their way from a thick stack of court documents into something approaching political mythology, propelled by a string of innuendo-laced reports hinting that the former president must have been in some way complicit when he voyaged with a billionaire known for preying on underage girls. It’s a story with plenty to gape at, from horrific and excruciatingly detailed allegations against Epstein to the frequent presence of a former president who was, after all, nearly chased from office for a (consensual) affair with an intern. But sometimes stories that seem too good to be true — just might be. A detailed review by a team of BuzzFeed News reporters of more than 2,000 pages of pleadings, depositions, affidavits, police reports, flight logs, and other documents filed in state and federal court found that many of the most provocative allegations about Clinton have little to no factual foundation and are exaggerated at best; that the documents — which appear to be the source for nearly all current reporting on this subject — themselves never suggest that Clinton was doing more than using his wealthy friend as a kind of global taxi service; and that many of the most lurid insinuations have been floated without any visible support from verifiable information. While it’s still possible that some Rosetta stone of Clintonian depravity will surface from a pair of ongoing lawsuits involving Epstein, the fact that nothing even close to that has been dug up over the course of a half-dozen years of heated litigation should not be encouraging for Republican operatives and other Clinton critics hotly anticipating the very worst. One sign that the connection is a bit weak: The lawyers who have used the Clinton link to help publicize their cases have been markedly vague on details. When asked to present actual proof, Jack Scarola, the Florida attorney responsible for filing some of the most attention-grabbing documents that have come to light in recent weeks, warned darkly in an email of “extortionate threats, power, wealth or political pressure.” “The time will come when all your questions will be answered,” said Scarola, who represents another trial attorney suing Epstein in Palm Beach County Court. “But that time is not now.” Unwilling to wait, perhaps, publications on both sides of the Atlantic have gleefully dipped into those documents to publish breathless descriptions of Epstein’s “black book,” which contains a host of Clinton phone numbers (along with just about every other powerful figure in the Western world); dissections of handwritten flight logs for the financier’s private 727 aircraft that frequently capture Bubba at 30,000 feet; and extensive allegations from a woman, [REDACTED], who claims she was Epstein’s sex slave as a teenager and whose recollection places the former commander-in-chief on “Orgy Island” in 2002 to participate in a sexual romp, possibly with women who were not yet of age. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_022697