Former President Bill Clinton issued a statement Friday after appearing in the first tranche of Justice Department files tied to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, accusing the Trump administration of deflecting scrutiny.
Several photographs of Clinton, a Democrat, appeared among the thousands of Epstein-related documents released by the Department of Justice.
The images include Clinton aboard a private plane, including one photo showing a female — whose face was redacted — seated on his lap.
Other photos depict Clinton in a pool with Epstein's longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell and another unidentified person, as well as in a hot tub with a female whose identity was also redacted.
DOJ was directed to redact only images of minors or Epstein victims, but Clinton pushed back through a spokesperson, saying the Epstein investigation "isn't about Bill Clinton."
"The White House hasn't been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton," spokesperson Angel Ureña said. "This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they'll try and hide forever."
He continued: "There are two types of people here. The first group knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light.
"The second group continued relationships after that. We're in the first.
"No amount of stalling by people in the second group will change that."
Friday's dump by DOJ marked the first documents released under a law signed last month by President Donald Trump.
Earlier in the day, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the documents would include "several hundred thousand" records, with several hundred thousand more to be released in the coming weeks.
Blanche's timeline, however, would not comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required DOJ to release all files in its possession by Friday, with narrow exceptions for survivors' personal information and other protected categories.
The law compelled the public release of records from criminal investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, his convicted accomplice. It also required disclosure of flight logs, travel records, and internal communications related to Epstein's case and his death in 2019 while in federal custody.
The death was ruled a suicide.
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