Donald Trump has named Bill Clinton and former Harvard president Larry Summers as men with ties to Jeffrey Epstein as he seeks to negate the ongoing fallout over the child sex trafficker.
As more reports emerge about Trump’s past relationship with Epstein, the president said the public should focus on the disgraced financier’s other friends and former housemates.
Among them, he said, was Clinton, who was a known associate of Epstein but has strongly denied knowing about his crimes, as well as hedge fund identities Trump said lived with the disgraced financier.
“People should really focus on how well the country is doing... or they should focus on the fact that Larry Summers from Harvard, or that Bill Clinton, who you know very well, and lots of other friends - really close friends - of Jeffrey Epstein should be spoken about,” Trump told reporters.
“You should focus on some of the hedge fund guys,” he later added without naming them. “I’ll give you a list. These guys lived with Jeffrey Epstein. I sure as hell didn’t.”
It has previously been reported that former Harvard President and ex-Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers met repeatedly with Epstein, who donated millions of dollars to Harvard during Summers’ tenure from 2001 to 2006.
According to a Wall Street Journal report from 2023, even after Harvard stopped accepting donations from Epstein following his guilty plea in 2008 for sex offenses involving an underage girl, he and Summers continued to meet, something for which the former Harvard president has expressed regret.
Trump’s comments came one day after The New York Times revealed that his name had appeared on a contributor list for a book celebrating Epstein’s 50th birthday.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal also reported that Trump allegedly sent Epstein a letter for that birthday, featuring a drawing of a naked woman with his name mimicking pubic hair.
However, speaking before he left the White House for a trip to Scotland on Friday, Trump insisted he had “nothing to do” with Epstein and even suggested that someone may have forged his signature or handwriting.
“I don’t even know what they’re talking about. Now somebody could have written a letter and used my name, but that’s happened a lot,” he claimed.
Epstein died in a Manhattan jail in 2019 as he was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges involving underage girls.
His former girlfriend and associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, was subsequently convicted in 2021 on federal charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy for helping Epstein recruit and abuse underage girls.
She was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but Trump has now deployed Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to interview her. On Friday, he said he was “allowed” to pardon Maxwell but added that he hadn’t given the matter any thought.
Now, six years after Epstein’s death, his heinous acts and social networks have come back to haunt the president, who has spent weeks unsuccessfully attempting to kill the issue, which he has branded a hoax.
Clinton, like Trump, was also a known associate of Epstein, and according to the Times’ article on Thursday, he, too, featured in the 50th birthday book alongside Trump.
In response to that latest report, a Clinton spokesperson referred media outlets to a previous statement saying the former president did not know about Epstein’s crimes and that they severed ties years before Epstein’s death.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Summers and Clinton and has asked the White House to provide the list offered by the president of “hedge fund guys” and others who lived with Epstein.
