Pedophile Jeffrey Epstein cut ties with Bill Clinton because he thought the former president was a liar, according to new emails his estate turned over to Congress on Wednesday.
The emails, obtained by the House Oversight Committee, also reveal that Kathryn Ruemmler — former White House counsel to Barack Obama — maintained a remarkably cozy relationship with Epstein. The two exchanged friendly messages and regularly chatted politics in the run-up to the 2016 election, underscoring just how deep Epstein’s connections ran inside Democratic power circles, the New York Post reported.
In a Jan. 23, 2016, email, Epstein wrote that he broke off contact with Clinton after “he swore, with whole-hearted conviction to me that he had done something, he had forgotten that he also swore the exact opposite to me only weeks before.”
“Who knows what they’re talking about,” a Clinton spokesperson replied in a statement. “What we do know and have always said is that President Clinton knew nothing about Epstein’s heinous crimes and hadn’t spoken to him in twenty years. Now here it is in black and white.”
“I will just say I told you so. Not to sound overly dramatic, but he is very close to being a psychopath,” Ruemmler had said earlier in the exchange of the mysterious individual. “[H]e has no conscience. It’s scary.”
“He obviously said something to you yesterday that was disturbing, and you don’t want to tell me. Just tell me — I can take it. I promise,” added Ruemmler of the person, who at one time was listed in January 2019 as a backup executor to Epstein’s estate, according to The Wall Street Journal.
who was once listed as a backup executor to Epstein’s estate in January 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported.
But it remains unclear how long the rift lasted, as Clinton appears in other emails within the more than 20,000 pages of documents released Wednesday by the House Oversight Committee.
“Let’s do a men of the world conference,” theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss said in an April 5, 2018, email to Epstein, sending a proposed invite list that included Clinton, actor Kevin Spacey, former Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and director Woody Allen.
Ruemmler met Epstein while working as a partner at Latham & Watkins. She is now the chief legal officer and general counsel at Goldman Sachs. A spokesperson for the firm said her interactions with Epstein were limited to business.
“They shared a common client that originated as an Epstein referral,” the spokesperson said, referring to her time at Latham & Watkins.
Clinton and Epstein’s ties date back to at least the early 1990s, when Epstein donated to Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign. He later contributed $20,000 to Hillary Clinton’s 1999 Senate campaign. White House visitor logs show Epstein visited the White House more than a dozen times during Clinton’s presidency.
After Clinton left office, the two remained in contact. Epstein continued donating to the Clinton Foundation, and flight records show Clinton took more than two dozen trips on Epstein’s private plane, often referred to as the “Lolita Express.”
Epstein was known to travel with young women on his jet while maintaining relationships with a number of prominent public figures.
The former president was photographed receiving a shoulder massage from Chauntae Davies, a 22-year-old massage therapist, during a refueling stop on a 2002 humanitarian trip to Africa aboard the “Lolita Express.”
Clinton also visited Epstein’s New York apartment, though a spokesperson said he never traveled to Epstein’s private island, Little St. James. Notably, Epstein kept a painting in his Upper East Side residence depicting Clinton in a blue dress — a reference to the garment central to the former president’s scandal involving Monica Lewinsky.
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that a federal investigation into alleged fraud in California has begun, signaling a widening crackdown after similar revelations of systemic abuse in Minnesota’s state-run childcare programs.
“California, under Governor Gavin Newscum, is more corrupt than Minnesota, if that’s possible,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, using a mocking version of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s name. “The fraud investigation of California has begun.”
Trump did not immediately provide details about the scope of the California probe, but the declaration comes less than 24 hours after his administration froze all federal childcare payments to Minnesota amid reports that Somali-run daycare and healthcare operators stole more than $9 billion in taxpayer funds.
The president’s new statement marks the first time California has been formally linked to the widening federal effort to track down fraudulent spending in social programs. His comments follow a series of public warnings to Democratic governors he accuses of mismanaging state welfare systems.
“Tim Walz destroyed Minnesota,” Trump said Monday, “but Newsom, Pritzker, and Hochul have done, in my opinion, an even more dishonest and incompetent job.
Federal officials have not released specifics of the California case, though multiple law enforcement and oversight agencies have been mobilized in recent days following the Health and Human Services Department’s announcement of a nationwide anti-fraud sweep.
HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill confirmed Tuesday that the agency has “turned off the money spigot” to Minnesota and imposed new nationwide verification measures to prevent further abuse of taxpayer funds.
“You have probably read the serious allegations that the state of Minnesota has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to fraudulent daycares across Minnesota over the past decade,” O’Neill said. “Today we have taken three actions against the blatant fraud that appears to be rampant in Minnesota and across the country.”
Under the new HHS directives:
All federal childcare payments will now require receipts or photo evidence before funds are released to a state.
Individuals identified in investigative journalist Nick Shirley’s viral video — which captured empty daycare centers receiving millions in public money — have been flagged for full audits.
A dedicated fraud-reporting hotline and email system has been launched through ChildCare.gov
for parents and whistleblowers.
“We have turned off the money spigot and we are finding the fraud,” O’Neill declared.
The announcement follows a dramatic escalation in Minnesota, where Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents began door-to-door raids in Minneapolis on Monday targeting businesses suspected of laundering welfare funds through fake childcare centers and health programs.
“Homeland Security Investigations @ICEgov are on the ground in Minneapolis right now conducting a massive investigation on childcare and other rampant fraud,” DHS Chief Kristi Noem confirmed in a post on X. “More coming.”
The coordinated response comes after Shirley’s footage from Minneapolis’s “Quality Learning Center” — which appeared virtually empty despite receiving millions in public funds — went viral last week, prompting widespread outrage and bipartisan calls for accountability.
In the video, a woman at the facility shouted, “Don’t open up! It’s ICE!” after being approached by investigators. The center’s sign misspelled “learning” as “learing,” a detail that became emblematic of the alleged scheme’s brazenness.
Federal audits later found that the daycare and several similar facilities had received large sums despite repeated state violations and minimal oversight from Gov. Tim Walz’s administration.
Officials say the Minnesota scandal, potentially the largest case of welfare fraud in U.S. history, may have diverted as much as $9 billion in federal and state funds — some of which authorities believe was funneled abroad to terrorist-linked networks in Somalia.
Trump’s decision to link California to the expanding investigation reflects growing concern that similar networks may be operating in other blue states with lax oversight and massive welfare budgets.
“California has a long history of corruption in its social spending programs,” said one senior administration official speaking on background. “The president is making it clear that this investigation won’t stop with Minnesota.”