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Former President Bill Clinton’s deputy chief of staff is speaking out after the Dec. 19 release of documents and photos related to the investigation of the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
The Department of Justice released several pictures that show Clinton as part of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law on November 19. Angel Ureña, the deputy chief of staff for Clinton, wrote in a statement on X that the DOJ’s decision to “dump” the files “late on a Friday” was not “to protect Bill Clinton.”
“The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton,” the statement claims, in reference to the administration of President Donald Trump, who is also seen in photos from the Epstein files.
“This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever. So they can release as many grainy, 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be,” Ureña added.
“There are two types of people here. The first group knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light,” Ureña continued. “The second group continued relationships with him after. We’re in the first. No amount of stalling by people in the second group will change that.”
The Epstein Files Transparency Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law on November 19, requires the DOJ to make public “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in its possession that relate to the investigation and prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein.”
One of them was a picture of former President Bill Clinton in a hot tub with his arms crossed behind his head.
In a different picture, Clinton is wading through a pool with Ghislaine Maxwell and a woman whose face was blocked out by the police.
Later photos showed Clinton posing with American pop stars Michael Jackson and Diana Ross and sitting next to a woman on a plane who was wearing an American flag pin, but whose face was blurred out.
He was also seen smiling and holding hands with Epstein, a disgraced financier and convicted sex offender who died, at what looked like a dinner party. He was wearing a festive shirt.
There was no context or information about where the photos were taken. Clinton has repeatedly denied any involvement in or knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.
Abigail Jackson, the White House’s deputy press secretary, posted on social media on Friday afternoon about the never-before-seen photos of the former president.
“Here is Bill Clinton in a hot tub next to someone whose identity has been redacted. Per the Epstein Files Transparency Act, DOJ was specifically instructed only to redact the faces of victims and/or minors,” Jackson wrote. “Time for the media to start asking real questions.”
On Friday, the DOJ put thousands of documents and hundreds of photos on its website. These were all supposedly found by the government while looking into Epstein and Maxwell’s sex trafficking cases.
Other pictures showed Epstein’s homes from the inside and outside, personal pictures of Epstein with different people, and heavily redacted possible victim exhibits.
There were more than a dozen politically known people in the files, but the fact that Clinton and other well-known people were in them doesn’t mean they did anything wrong.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act made it necessary for the DOJ to make the files public 30 days after President Donald Trump signed it on November 19.
The DOJ may not release some files if doing so would put an ongoing investigation or prosecution at risk, protect victims’ privacy, or keep sensitive child sexual abuse material from being made public.
