Danny Hakim
New York: Jeffrey Epstein’s long-time companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, played a substantial role in supporting the creation of the Clinton Global Initiative, one of former US president Bill Clinton’s signature post-White House endeavours, new documents released by the Justice Department show.
Maxwell took part in budget discussions related to the first Clinton Global Initiative conference; talked through challenges about it with both Clinton aides and Publicis Groupe, the company that produced the inaugural event; and arranged to wire $US1 million to pay Publicis for its work on “the Clinton project”, according to emails in the massive cache of documents collected as part of the government’s investigations of Epstein.
The source of the money is unclear, including whether Epstein provided the funds. However, the emails show he was aware of the payment.
“Ask him to tell you why i million now and where will it be going,” Epstein wrote to Maxwell a few days after she received the wiring instructions from Publicis.
Maxwell’s involvement in the launch of the Clinton Global Initiative took place in 2004, before Epstein’s 2006 indictment and 2008 guilty plea for solicitation of prostitution with a minor, and long before Maxwell, a daughter of media baron Robert Maxwell, was sentenced in 2022 to two decades in prison for conspiring with Epstein to sexually exploit under-age girls.
The emails support an assertion Maxwell made last year in an interview with the Justice Department that she played a key role in helping set up the global conference.
Clinton has said he stopped speaking with Epstein sometime before his 2006 indictment. In a statement, Angel Ureña, a spokesperson for the Clintons, said the former president had “called for the full release of the Epstein files” and “has nothing to hide”.
“He knew nothing about Epstein’s crimes,” Ureña said. “When it became clear Epstein had no genuine interest in life-saving philanthropic work, there was no reason for further contact. The facts are the facts and the truth is the truth, and they’re both on our side.”
The new documents provide texture about the connections between the Clinton and Epstein circles, which have long generated a swirl of conspiracy theories and unverified allegations.
The emails reinforce previous accounts that Clinton and those around him had a more enduring relationship with Maxwell than with Epstein. In addition to her involvement with the Clinton Global Initiative, the records reveal that Maxwell had flirtatious exchanges in the early 2000s with Doug Band, who at the time was Clinton’s top aide.
She was known to have attended Chelsea Clinton’s 2010 wedding along with her then-boyfriend, Ted Waitt, a tech billionaire who was a friend of the Clintons and a prolific Clinton Foundation donor. And she remained in the Clinton orbit even after reports began surfacing accusing her of misconduct related to Epstein’s abuse of young women. Maxwell told the Justice Department last year that she last saw Bill Clinton sometime between 2016 and 2018, when she said they had dinner together in Los Angeles.
In a Justice Department interview last year, Maxwell said “president Clinton was my friend, not Epstein’s friend”. Her lawyer did not return requests for comment.
A review by The New York Times of references to the Clintons in the recently released files found very little related to former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and limited new information about the former president’s interactions with Epstein, a Democratic donor who supported Bill Clinton’s 1992 political campaign and donated $US10,000 to help refurbish the White House. He also donated $US20,000 to Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign in 1999.
Logs that have previously been made public show that Epstein visited the White House a number of times during the Clinton administration and that Bill Clinton took four international trips on Epstein’s private jet in 2002 and 2003. Hillary Clinton has said she never flew on Epstein’s plane.
The former president has said he never visited Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands, an account supported by emails between Epstein and his associates. (The Secret Service has indicated in the past that its agents have not been to the island, and said in a statement that “at this time, we have no new information to provide regarding this matter”.)
House Republicans have sought to put a spotlight on ties between the Clintons and Epstein, and threatened to hold them both in criminal contempt of Congress if they did not testify in the House oversight committee’s investigation into the convicted sex offender. Those depositions are scheduled for the end of this month.
Bill Clinton has tried to downplay his association with Epstein. In a sworn declaration submitted to the House panel last month, Clinton said while Epstein may have visited the White House while he was president, “I do not recall encountering Epstein, or any specific interactions with him, while in office”.
The former president also said that he did not recall when he first met Maxwell, “though I believe she was working for Epstein at the time”. Clinton said he did not recall his specific interactions with her or when he last saw her, “but it was many years ago”.
US President Donald Trump, who socialised extensively with Epstein and also travelled on his private plane, has expressed misgivings that the Clintons are being forced to testify, despite his repeated attacks on both of them over the years.
“I think it’s a shame, to be honest,” Trump told reporters this week. “I always liked him. Her? Yeah, she’s a very capable woman.”
For his part, Trump had warm words for Maxwell in 2020, after her arrest, saying, “I just wish her well, frankly”. Both presidents appear to have provided messages for a book put together for Epstein’s 50th birthday, though Trump’s staff has denied it.
A behind-the-scenes role
The Clinton Global Initiative was conceived in the early 2000s as Clinton’s version of the annual gathering of the global elite in Davos, Switzerland, with the goal of imbuing it with a more charity-minded mission to shape his post-presidential legacy.
Band, who has since had a bitter break with the Clintons, has long been credited with being the driving force behind the project. Maxwell’s involvement has been largely unknown.
But in her Justice Department interview last year, Maxwell said she had a “very central” role in setting up the Clinton Global Initiative, though she added that the idea was not originally hers. “I don’t try to elevate myself in any form of importance here,” she added.
Maxwell also indicated that Epstein was engaged in the effort, saying he “supported me to help them, but then I think he may have tried to use that to insert himself in some way”.
Richard Attias, a former top executive at Publicis, said in an interview this past week that Maxwell had played a key role in getting the project going.
“She was in Davos with president Clinton, and this is when they realised the amazing impact of Davos, and they came up with the idea of creating something similar, but with a different philosophy,” he said.
Attias said Maxwell sent the $US1 million to Publicis to pay for its work producing the event, which was held in New York in September 2005. He said he was not aware of who provided the funding but believed it likely came from multiple sources.
After initially saying he did not believe Epstein was involved, Attias later described Epstein as “one of the sponsors”, but in follow-up texts to the Times, he also said he didn’t really remember, noting the discussions took place more than two decades ago.
Attias, who left Publicis in 2008 – and who has since produced conferences for the Times – said in texts and the interview that he was ultimately uncertain about the extent of Epstein’s involvement in the Clinton conference.
In 2007, when Epstein’s lawyers were seeking lenient treatment for their client as he was being investigated for sex trafficking, they asserted in a letter to prosecutors that he “was part of the original group that conceived the Clinton Global Initiative”.
“President Clinton was my friend, not Epstein’s friend.”
Ghislaine Maxwell in a Justice Department interview last year
The Times identified one 2004 email to Maxwell from Attias in which he appeared to reference Epstein.
“I trust you and JE at 300 percent,” Attias wrote, while pleading for her to call off what appeared to be a lawyer for Epstein who was demanding a wide range of specific budget details early in the planning stages. (“We have no idea of what will be the programme, the venue, the hotels, the consultants, the speakers, etc. … ” Attias wrote to Maxwell.)
In a statement, the Clinton Foundation, which now runs the Clinton Global Initiative, said it accepted only one $US25,000 donation in 2006 from an Epstein-affiliated foundation, which has been previously reported. The foundation said it did not have any record of any other financial contributions to the Clinton Foundation or the Clinton Global Initiative related to Epstein or Maxwell.
“Publicis funded the development of the event which they were ultimately hired to produce,” the foundation said, adding that it “was not responsible for raising money for Publicis’ business”.
Post-presidential ties
Maxwell’s involvement in the kick-off of the Clinton Global Initiative came during a period when she and Epstein were both socialising with the former president.
In 2002, less than two years after leaving the White House, Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane on a 10-day trip to seven countries, including Ghana and Nigeria. Other passengers on the trip, which has been previously reported, included Maxwell and actors Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker, according to flight manifests and photos that are among the documents that have been released.
At some point, Clinton appears to have handwritten a thank-you note to Epstein on stationery that Epstein kept on one of his planes. The Times obtained a photo of the undated note, which was framed and recovered from Epstein’s estate. In it, the former president thanked the financier for letting him “invade your private space” and explained that he had been “exhausted and had to get away from the crowd”. He also wrote that “as we forge ahead, i’ll finally figure out the financial stuff!”
The newly released files show numerous interactions between Maxwell and the former president’s aides.
In November 2002, Maxwell arranged to send Clinton what she described as “devil slippers” for his birthday, an email shows. The next month, Maxwell and a Clinton aide corresponded about talking points for how to respond to a Vanity Fair reporter who was writing a profile on Epstein. The same day, another Clinton aide, Ira Magaziner, sent Maxwell an email describing a Clinton project to combat AIDS.
Asked about the contact, Magaziner said in an email to the Times that he had sent the kind of information he shared with potential donors about what would become the Clinton Health Access Initiative, a group that fights disease in dozens of countries.
During this period, Maxwell and Band, then a Clinton aide, were also exchanging suggestive emails, the documents show.
“Booboo,” Maxwell wrote to him in 2002, “are you around? I am very ill and require immediate medical attention – I am suffering from boobooitis – a very serious condition. Without a booboo fix the symptoms become very pronounced.”
She referred to “cries into the night that sound like Shakespeare sonnets that sound like this – Oh Douglas – oh Douglas – wherefore art though Douglas”.
The same day, Band replied that “my boobooitis is also reaching epic poportions”, adding, “Lots going on but will be In boobooville the second you arrive”.
During their exchanges, they facilitated connections between Clinton and Epstein. In an April 2002 message, Band wrote: “the pres wanted me to tell you to tell jeffrey he says hello and he misses him.”
In a statement to the Times, Band said his communication with Maxwell occurred when he was in his late 20s and unmarried.
“There was absolutely no physical relationship that occurred between us. Ever,” he said, calling Maxwell “a monster”.
In 2011, Band sent an email to another Clinton aide, directing him to “remove” Maxwell “from all lists” giving her access to Clinton-related events as questions about her conduct grew, according to a copy of the email viewed by the Times.
Earlier that year, a Daily Mail report had dubbed her “Epstein’s ‘Girl Friday’ Fixer”.
Ureña, the Clintons’ spokesperson, said nothing was communicated broadly across the organisation at the time about banning Maxwell.
Maxwell resurfaced at a Clinton Global Initiative event in 2013, after Band left the Clintons’ employ, and was honoured for an ocean conservation project.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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