Doug Band, a former top aide to Bill Clinton, made shocking allegations in an interview with Vanity Fair, including claims that the former president took a trip in 2003 to the island of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The island purportedly is where Epstein trafficked underage victims.
“In January 2003, according to Band, Clinton visited Epstein’s private Caribbean island, Little St. James,” the Vanity Fair column states, adding in his claim that “it was one of the few trips he declined to go on in his time with Clinton.”
A spokesperson for Clinton has denied the claim, saying he “had never been to the island” and provided “detailed travelogue entries of the period in question” that did not include a reference to such a visit.
Following Epstein’s arrest in 2019, Clinton’s press secretary Angel Ureña tweeted a statement in which the former President admitted to taking a “total of four trips” on the billionaire’s private plane.
Ex-aide to Bill Clinton claims the former president visited Jeffrey Epstein’s notorious islandhttps://t.co/9Y967Ne7WP
— Fox News (@FoxNews) December 3, 2020
Ureña also wrote on Twitter, “The story keeps changing, the facts don’t.”
An analysis by Fox News, however, showed Clinton had traveled on Epstein’s jet – known as the ‘Lolita Express’ – 26 separate times, a fact also made in the Vanity Fair piece.
Band is described in the piece as having “worked alongside Bill Clinton every day for nearly two decades.”
RELATED: Bill Clinton Invited Accused Sex-Trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell To An ‘Intimate’ Dinner
Doug Band: Bill Clinton Went To Epstein’s Island
Doug Band claims in the interview that he “had no idea about Epstein’s sex crimes back then,” but had enough of a bad feeling about the man that “he advised Clinton to end the relationship.”
But the former president “continued to socialize with Epstein and take his money,” allegedly.
Clinton, according to a Daily Beast report in September, invited Ghislaine Maxwell, a woman accused of procuring underage girls for Epstein, to a “cozy” dinner in 2014.
Band, the report states, had “cut Maxwell out of the president’s network in 2011.”
And yet, the Daily Beast claimed, he was with Maxwell in a Los Angeles restaurant three years later.
More troubling – Clinton’s team was aware of Epstein’s transgressions at the time of that dinner, having been convicted of procuring for prostitution a girl below the age of 18 in 2008.
Similarly, one of Epstein’s alleged survivors, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, had already accused Maxwell of being involved in the trafficking.
A witness interview document between Giuffre and her lawyers was unsealed in July by a New York Judge.
At one point in the transcribed conversation, she is asked about alleged “favors” owed to Epstein by Clinton.
“I remember asking Jeffrey [a] ‘What’s Bill Clinton doing here?’ kind of thing, and he laughed it off and said, ‘Well, he owes me a favor,’” she said, according to the documents.
“He never told me what favors they were. I never knew. I didn’t know if he was serious. It was just a joke.”
Band Rips The Clinton Family ‘Cult’
The longtime Clinton aide went on to rip the family apart, suggesting being a part of Clintonworld is like being in a cult.
“It’s like a cult, that world,” he said. “It’s hard to get yourself out and difficult to see outside of it. And it’s even harder to understand that when you’re inside.”
Wow. Doug Band — Bill Clinton’s former right-hand man — says Clinton visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island, which Clinton has repeatedly denied. https://t.co/86ymaZLdb4 pic.twitter.com/TlVRk2KBm1
— Jacob Shamsian (@JayShams) December 2, 2020
While he was on the inside, Band flew on Epstein’s private jet as well, including for Clinton’s 2002 humanitarian trip to Africa, and was listed in Epstein’s Little Black Book.
Epstein was arrested on multiple charges related to sex trafficking last year, but his case never went to trial, as he died in jail prior to the onset.
Maxwell is currently being held in prison, charged with multiple sex trafficking and sexual assault offenses, along with two counts of perjury.
Clinton, meanwhile, gave a speech of support for Joe Biden at the Democratic National Convention earlier this year.
