Two US presidents and their long associations with Jeffrey Epstein

US President Donald Trump and former US President Bill Clinton are among several high profile figures who are known to have associated with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump and Clinton were each photographed with Epstein several times over the 1990s and early 2000s and occasionally moved in the same social circles.

Neither Trump nor Clinton have been accused of wrongdoing by survivors of Epstein's abuse and they have both denied knowledge of his sex offending. All of the publicly available evidence to date suggests their relationships with Epstein ended several years before his conviction.

BBC Verify has looked back through online archives to examine what we know about the two presidents' decades-long associations with Jeffrey Epstein.

Jeffrey Epstein's association with Donald Trump appears to have started around the late 1980s and with Bill Clinton in the early 1990s.

In a 2002 interview with New York Magazine, Trump said he had known Epstein for 15 years, placing the beginning of their relationship to around 1987.

There are several photos and videos of Trump and Epstein at various events in the early 1990s.

Archive footage shows the pair attended a party at Mar-a-Lago in 1992. Ghislaine Maxwell, an associate of Epstein's who was convicted of sex trafficking charges in 2021, can be seen behind them.

According to NBC, who unearthed the footage from its archive in 2019, the video was filmed for a US talk show called "A Closer Look", which profiled a "newly-divorced" Trump in one of its episodes.

At one point in the footage Trump is shown dancing surrounded by young women. NBC reports the women were cheerleaders for the Buffalo Bills, who were in town for a game against the Miami Dolphins.

Photographs obtained by CNN show that Epstein attended Trump's wedding to Marla Maples in 1993 and in the same year the pair appeared together at the opening of the Harley Davidson Cafe in New York.

At the end of the decade in 1999, the two men were filmed speaking with each other at a Victoria's Secret fashion event in New York.

There are also photos of Bill Clinton with Epstein in the early 1990s.

In September 1993, for example, Epstein and Maxwell were photographed speaking with the then President Clinton after an event for donors to a White House restoration project.

Public records show that Epstein gave two $1,000 donations to Clinton's presidential campaign in 1992.

Trump and Clinton's relationships with Epstein continued into the new millennium.

Photos published in Florida newspaper the Palm Beach Post show Trump, Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Prince Andrew at a charity fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago in 2000.

In New York Magazine two years later, Trump said Epstein was a "terrific guy" and that "it is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side".

In that same article, Clinton said through his spokesperson that Epstein was "both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist".

It was around this time that Clinton was taking trips on Epstein's private jet.

Shortly after Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges in July 2019, Clinton's spokesperson said in a statement on X that the former president took four trips on Epstein's jet between 2002 and 2003, including "stops in connection with the work of the Clinton Foundation".

Appearing to reference one of those trips, Clinton's spokesperson said in the 2002 New York Magazine article that Clinton "appreciated his [Epstein's] insights and generosity during the recent trip to Africa to work on democratization, empowering the poor, citizen service, and combating HIV/AIDS."

Clinton's spokesperson's 2019 statement also confirmed that a meeting between the two took place in Epstein's office in Harlem in 2002, as well as a "brief visit" to Epstein's New York apartment at around the same time.

A picture of Epstein and Clinton in Brunei in 2002 appears in this archived version of a Vanity Fair article.

Both Trump and Clinton are alleged to have contributed - along with about 50 other people - to Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday book in 2003.

Earlier this year the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published a letter appearing to bear Trump's signature below a sketch of a naked woman, which read: "Happy Birthday - and may every day be another wonderful secret."

Trump denied writing the letter to Epstein and sued the WSJ for defamation. He told ABC News at the time: "It's not my signature. And it's not the way I speak. And anybody that's covered me for a long time, knows - that's not my language."

Bill Clinton's name appeared in the birthday book next to a message which read: "It's reassuring isn't it, to have lasted as long, across all the years of learning and knowing, adventures and [illegible word], and also to have your childlike curiosity, the drive to make a difference and the solace of friends."

Clinton did not comment on his alleged message in the birthday book.

It was around the middle of the decade when Clinton and Trump's relationships with Epstein appear to have ended.

After Epstein's arrest in 2019, Trump said of their relationship: "I had a falling out with him a long time ago. I don't think I've spoke to him for 15 years". This suggests the two last spoke around 2004.

In 2025, Trump told reporters in Scotland he threw Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago because he "stole" his employees.

"I said don't ever do that again. He did it again, and I threw him out of the place," Trump said.

Clinton's spokesperson said in 2019 that the former president had "not spoken to Epstein in well over a decade".

Writing in his memoir published last year, Clinton said he "had no inkling of the crimes he [Epstein] was committing," adding "by the time he was first arrested in 2005, I had stopped contact with him".

Epstein was first convicted of sex offences in 2008. Shortly after being imprisoned on sex trafficking charges in 2019 he killed himself in his prison cell.

BBC Verify contacted the White House and Bill Clinton's office for comment.

The White House told us: "President Trump has been consistently calling for transparency related to the Epstein files and his Administration has delivered - by releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee's subpoena request, and President Trump recently calling for further investigations into Epstein's Democrat friends, the Trump Administration has done more for the victims than Democrats ever have."

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