On Friday night, Bill Maher returned to his HBO program Real Time and, unlike any of the other late-night hosts, addressed Bill Clinton’s shady ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the late convicted pedophile who trafficked and abused young girls.
“I know in your book you say you got 2016 wrong because you forgot Bill Clinton’s first rule of politics, which is: make it about them, not about you,” Maher told guest Paul Begala during the panel portion. “But let me ask you about Bill Clinton, because this always comes up with the Democrats with every election. What do we do with the Clintons now?”
“There are witnesses who saw him on Jeffrey Epstein’s sex island,” the host continued. “Obviously, it’s denied [by Clinton]. You shake your head like, ‘That’s impossible.’ Bill Clinton, a horny guy, on sex island? Ridiculous! Look, it’s possible.”
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A judge recently released a trove of sealed records regarding Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s alleged co-conspirator. And among the documents was testimony from Virginia Giuffre, who claims to have been trafficked and abused by Epstein and Maxwell. One file from 2011 sees Giuffre saying that she saw Bill Clinton at Epstein’s 70-acre private island Little Saint James (aka “Pedophile Island”) in the U.S. Virgin Islands—and that “two young girls” were accompanying Epstein on the trip.
“Ghislane, Emmy [another Epstein victim], and there was 2 young girls that I could identify,” Giuffre said of the party joining Epstein and Clinton. “I never really knew them well anyways. It was just 2 girls from New York.” This allegation was also included in the Netflix docuseries Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, wherein Giuffre and an employee on Little Saint James both say they witnessed Clinton on the island.
“Bill Clinton has been on that island,” says Steve Scully, who managed telecommunications for Epstein on Little Saint James from 1999-2005, in the docuseries. “I saw Bill Clinton sitting with Jeffrey on the living room porch.”
Adds Giuffre, “I remember having a dinner with Clinton. He was there, and I never saw him do anything improper. I wish, you know, he would just come clean about, like, ‘Yeah, I was there. So what? Who cares? I didn’t see anything going on.’” (Clinton has repeatedly denied ever visiting the Little Saint James.)
Which brings us back to Maher, who said of Clinton, “He has assets and he has things that are not quite assets—and same with Hillary. What should the Democrats do with the Clintons?”
Later on, the comic answered his own question: “They are huge distractions. I can see them being huge distractions.”
