White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said President Donald Trump “was wrong” when he accused former President Bill Clinton of visiting the private island of convicted s** offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to a new Vanity Fair profile published Tuesday, Dec. 16.
In interviews conducted over Trump’s first year back in office, Wiles said she reviewed the Epstein documents and acknowledged that Trump’s name appears in them.
Trump, 79, has repeatedly claimed that Clinton made numerous trips to Epstein’s private island, Little St. James, where the financier’s alleged underage s** trafficking was said to have occurred. While in Scotland over the summer, Trump told reporters, “By the way, I never went to the island, and Bill Clinton went there, supposedly, 28 times.”
Wiles told Vanity Fair that Trump has offered no evidence to support that allegation — and said the record does not back it up.
“There is no evidence” those visits happened, Wiles, 68, told the magazine. She also rejected the suggestion that the documents contain incriminating information about Clinton, saying, “The president was wrong about that.”
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Clinton, 79, has long maintained that while he knew Epstein, he neither knew about nor participated in any criminal activity.
In November, Trump publicly asked U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to open an investigation into Clinton and other Democrats’ ties to Epstein, drawing renewed attention as questions continued about Trump’s own past relationship with Epstein.
The Vanity Fair profile ran in two parts and included remarks from others in Trump’s orbit, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as well as homeland security adviser Stephen Miller and press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
After publication, Wiles criticized the piece in a statement, calling it a “disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.” She argued that “significant context was disregarded” and said comments from her and others “about the team and the President” were left out, claiming the result was an “overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative.”
Leavitt also defended Wiles in a separate statement, saying Wiles had helped Trump deliver “the most successful first 11 months in office of any President in American history.” Leavitt added, “President Trump has no greater or more loyal advisor than Susie,” and said the administration was “grateful for her steady leadership.”
Last week, House Democrats released new photos showing Epstein with Trump, Clinton and other prominent figures, including Woody Allen and Steve Bannon.
Epstein died by suicide in August 2019 at the Metropolitan Correction Center in Manhattan while awaiting trial on federal s** trafficking charges. His confidant, Ghislaine Maxwell, was convicted in December 2021 of s** trafficking for recruiting, enticing and transporting minors to engage in illegal s** acts with Epstein.
Trump has faced criticism — including from some supporters — over his administration’s handling of long-anticipated records tied to Epstein’s case. In November, Trump called the files “a hoax” and sought to distance himself from them.
Wiles told Vanity Fair that FBI Director Kash Patel had long advocated releasing the Epstein files — but she suggested his expectations about what they contained did not match what she says the documents actually show.
“For years, Kash has been saying, ‘Got to release the files, got to release the files,’ ” Wiles said. “And he’s been saying that with a view of what he thought was in these files that turns out not to be right.”
