During one of Bill Clinton’s jaunts around the world with Jeffrey Epstein in 2002, the former president enjoyed a six-course meal in Singapore with the sex-trafficker, his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, and government officials of the city-state.
Now photos of the occasion—which were scrubbed from the National Archives of Singapore (NAS)—are resurfacing on X and Reddit ahead of the release of a cache of secret Epstein files. As The Daily Beast reported, a federal court will unseal hundreds of records in the new year that were part of victim Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 lawsuit against Maxwell.
Clinton’s night of fine dining occurred during one of his tours on Epstein’s private plane, which was christened the “Lolita Express” by the tabloids.
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Flight records show that Clinton and his former adviser Doug Band, who is among the more than 150 people expected to be named in the document dump, joined Epstein and Maxwell on a trip from Shenzhen, China, to Singapore on May 23, 2002.
That evening, according to the NAS photo and a contemporaneous report in a Singaporean daily newspaper, then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong hosted Clinton and his crew at The Fullerton Hotel Singapore’s Jade restaurant.
Award-winning chef Sam Leong served up a full-course dinner, including roasted lamb rack with green curry sauce and pear crostini, The Straits Times reported.
One archived photo from the event shows Epstein and Maxwell smiling for a group picture with other local officials at a round table topped in wine glasses. Clinton is standing a couple seats to the creepy couple’s left side. The image, last saved on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine in June of last year, is no longer on NAS’s website. Maxwell and Epstein sit at opposite ends of the table in a second archived photograph.
In a photo that remains on NAS’s site, Epstein and Band appear to be in the background as the prime minister walks with Clinton. Former U.S. Ambassador to Singapore Steven Green, who also joined the dinner, is captured nearby.
It’s unclear why the photos of Clinton, Epstein, and Maxwell were removed from the Singapore government archives.
The images have been circulating since they were revealed on independent journalism site Newspaste.com in May.
The former president’s ties to Epstein and Maxwell have been under increased scrutiny since Epstein’s July 2019 arrest for child sex-trafficking and death in jail a month later.
Giuffre’s litigation and a pair of lawsuits filed against JPMorgan last year further exposed other high-powered people in Epstein’s orbit—Microsoft honcho Bill Gates, billionaire Leon Black, venture capitalist Peter Thiel, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin, to name a few.
Before Clinton’s Singapore dinner, he spoke at a two-day “National Achievers Congress,” where people paid $9,950 each to hear him, The Straits Times reported.
That year, Clinton, Maxwell, Band, the Secret Service, young women in Epstein’s circle, and other famous faces including model Naomi Campbell hitched rides on the trafficker’s jet, flight records show.
In September 2002, Clinton used Epstein’s plane to tour Africa to raise awareness about poverty and HIV/AIDS with actors Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker. (Billionaire Ron Burkle also traveled with them for parts of the trip.) One victim, Juliette Bryant, told The Daily Beast that she was recruited into Epstein’s world when this entourage made a stop in Cape Town, South Africa. “That’s what gave Epstein credibility,” she said. “The fact that he was with Clinton.”
Chauntae Davies, then a 22-year-old masseuse and victim of Epstein, was one of the passengers on the Africa trip and was photographed giving Clinton a shoulder massage. She described the 42nd President of the United States as a “complete gentleman.”
“Although the image looks bizarre,” Davies told the Daily Mail, “President Clinton was a perfect gentleman during the trip and I saw absolutely no foul play involving him.”
In 2019, Clinton’s spokesperson said Clinton “knows nothing about the serious crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York.”
“In 2002 and 2003,” the spokesperson added in a statement, “President Clinton took a total of four trips on Jeffrey Epstein’s airplane: one to Europe, one to Asia, and two to Africa, which included stops in connection with the work of the Clinton Foundation. Staff, supporters of the Foundation, and his Secret Service detail traveled on every leg of every trip. He had one meeting with Epstein in his Harlem office in 2002, and around the same time made one brief visit to Epstein’s New York apartment with a staff member and his security detail.
“He’s not spoken to Epstein in well over a decade, and has never been to Little St. James Island, Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico, or his residence in Florida.”
Clinton did, however, stay in contact with Maxwell. As The Daily Beast reported, he joined the British socialite for a group dinner in Los Angeles in 2014 with former staffers, Democratic donor Steve Bing, and Maxwell’s now ex-husband Scott Borgerson.
In 2010, Maxwell attended Chelsea Clinton’s wedding, and her ocean nonprofit, The TerraMar Project, partnered with the Clinton Global Initiative three years later.
While Clinton has denied ever visiting Epstein’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Giuffre once told a lawyer that the former president was a guest there, according to court records unsealed in 2020. (She does not accuse him of any wrongdoing.)
A former employee of Epstein’s also reported seeing Clinton on the island.
“You know, I remember asking Jeffrey, what’s Bill Clinton doing here [on the island],” Giuffre said in a transcript of a conversation with an attorney. She added that Epstein laughed off her question and said, “Well, he owes me a favor.”
“He never told me what favors they were,” Giuffre said. “I never knew. I didn’t know if he was serious. It was just a joke.”