‘Oh my!’: White House press secretary’s reaction to Bill Clinton hot tub photo in Epstein files
Saturday, 20 December 2025
“Oh my!” was the reaction of US President Donald Trump’s press secretary to a photo of former President Bill Clinton in a hot tub, which is among the Epstein files newly released by the US Department of Justice.
Clinton featured prominently in the first batch of files released Friday by the Justice Department stemming from its investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as the White House sought to move the focus of the highly anticipated documents from President Donald Trump.
“Oh my!” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote, with a flushed face emoji, alongside the photo of Clinton in a hot tub.
The photo shows Clinton in a hot tub with a woman whose face was redacted. The files do not say when the photos were taken and there was little context surrounding them.
There were several photos of Clinton among the thousands of documents made public. Some showed him on a private plane, including one with a woman whose face was redacted from the photo sitting on his lap. Another photo shows him in a pool with Epstein’s longtime confidant, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, and a person whose face was also redacted.
In a statement, Clinton spokesman Angel Ureña said the Epstein investigation “isn't about Bill Clinton.”
“There are two types of people here,” he said. “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.”
Clinton has never been accused of misconduct by Epstein’s known victims.
Another photo appears to show former prince Andrew laying across five people, whose faces are redacted. Maxwell is seen in the image standing behind them.
Among the files released were several heavily redacted documents, including a one 119 page document that is completely blacked out.
The department has acknowledged to Congress that the release of files is incomplete, and expected to disclose more by the end of the year.
The release included photographs, call logs, grand jury testimony and some documents and records that have already been in the public domain.
Why this is happening
The records could contain the most detailed look yet at nearly two decades worth of government investigations into Epstein’s sexual abuse of young women and underage girls.
Their release has long been demanded by a public hungry to learn whether any of Epstein’s rich and powerful associates knew about — or participated in — the abuse. Epstein’s accusers have also long sought answers about why federal authorities shut down their initial investigation into the allegations in 2008.
Bowing to political pressure from fellow Republicans, Trump on November 19 signed a bill giving the Justice Department 30 days to release most of its files and communications related to Epstein, including information about the investigation into his death in a federal jail. The law’s passage was a remarkable display of bipartisanship that overcame months of opposition from Trump and Republican leadership.
The Epstein investigations
Police in Palm Beach, Florida, began investigating Epstein in 2005 after the family of a 14-year-old girl reported she had been molested at his mansion. The FBI joined the investigation, and authorities gathered testimony from multiple underage girls who said they had been hired to give Epstein sexual massages.
Ultimately, though, prosecutors gave Epstein a deal that allowed him to avoid federal prosecution. He pleaded guilty to state prostitution charges involving someone under age 18 and was sentenced to 18 months in jail.
Epstein’s accusers then spent years in civil litigation trying to get that plea deal set aside. One of those women, Virginia Giuffre, accused Epstein of arranging for her to have sexual encounters, starting at age 17, with numerous other men, including billionaires, famous academics, US politicians and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, then known as Britain’s Prince Andrew.
All of those men denied the allegations. Prosecutors never brought charges in connection with Giuffre’s claims, but her account fuelled conspiracy theories about supposed government plots to protect the powerful. Giuffre died by suicide at her farm in Western Australia in April at age 41.
Federal prosecutors in New York brought new sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail a month after his arrest. Prosecutors then charged Epstein’s longtime confidant, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, with recruiting underage girls for Epstein to abuse.
Maxwell was convicted in late 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence, though she was moved from a low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas after she was interviewed over the summer by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Her lawyers argued that she never should have been tried or convicted.
The Justice Department in July said it had not found any information that could support prosecuting anyone else.
Lots of Epstein records were already public
After nearly two decades of court action and prying by reporters, a voluminous number of records related to Epstein is already public, including flight logs, address books, email correspondence, police reports, grand jury records, courtroom testimony and transcripts of depositions of his accusers, his staffers and others.
Yet, the public’s appetite for more records has been insatiable, particularly for anything related to Epstein’s associations with famous people including Trump, Mountbatten-Windsor and Clinton.
Trump was friends with Epstein for years before the two had a falling out. Neither he nor Clinton has ever been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and the mere inclusion of someone’s name in files from the investigation does not imply otherwise.
Mountbatten-Windsor denied ever having sex with Giuffre, but King Charles III stripped him of his royal titles this year after Giuffre’s memoir was published after she died.
– AP, Stuff