Bill Clinton threatened Vanity Fair against writing Epstein story, documents claim
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Former US president Bill Clinton attempted to threaten Vanity Fair into not writing about Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking, one of Epstein’s accusers has claimed.
In court documents unsealed on Thursday, Virginia Giuffre claims that Mr Clinton had “walked into” the magazine’s office and pressured them not to write about “his good friend J.E”.
A spokesperson for the magazine’s former editor Graydon Carter told The Daily Telegraph that the incident “categorically did not happen”.
Ms Giuffre did not say where the information she alleged came from.
The newly-unsealed documents come from a defamation lawsuit brought by Ms Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend and convicted sex trafficker, in 2015.
The allegation about Mr Clinton comes from a May 2011 email to journalist Sharon Churcher, then working for The Mail on Sunday, discussing the best way to publicise Ms Giuffre’s claims.
“When I was doing some research into VF yesterday, it does concern me what they could want to write about me considering that B Clinton walked into VF and threatened them not to write sex-trafficking articles about his good friend JE,” Ms Giuffre wrote.
Some former Vanity Fair journalists have previously claimed that Epstein himself put pressure on Mr Carter not to investigate his misdeeds, though Mr Carter has disputed this.
Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Clinton in an undated image
(Netflix)
The Independent has asked Mr Clinton and Mr Carter for comment.
The documents unsealed this week revealed the names of more than 100 victims, associates, or friends of Epstein, which had previously been redacted.
Major figures included Maxwell (named 560 times), the UK’s Prince Andrew (named 110 times), Mr Clinton (named 83 times), and Donald Trump (name 4 times), as well as many others.
Simply being included in these documents does not indicate any wrongdoing related to Epstein or anyone else.
A spokesperson for Mr Clinton said in 2019: “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.”
