Kevin Spacey is addressing his documented trip to Africa with former President Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein, the shadowy financier who died of an apparent suicide while charged with sex trafficking minors.
The “House of Cards” actor, whose career dwindled amidst numerous sexual assault allegations in 2017, claimed Tuesday he didn’t know Epstein, nor his since-convicted accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell when he boarded Epstein’s private jet for the 2002 trip.
“I didn’t want to be around this guy because I felt he put the president at risk on that trip to South Africa because there were these young girls,” the actor said on “Piers Morgan Uncensored.” “We were like, ‘Who is this guy?’”
When host Piers Morgan asked Spacey to clarify, he said, “There were young girls on those flights.”
Spacey was accused of child molestation in 2017. The actor’s private dealings became public when Epstein’s flight logs were recently authenticated, and Spacey’s name was found alongside Clinton’s.
Spacey claimed Tuesday that he had no idea who Epstein was when he boarded his plane as part of an “eight-day humanitarian trip” regarding AIDS prevention and awareness in 2002, as he “had become friends” with Clinton before accepting.
HuffPost has reached out to a representative for Clinton for comment.
“In 2015, I started seeing reports online, things on my Twitter account that I had flown to this guy Jeffrey Epstein’s island and I had abused young girls,” he told Morgan. “If you’d asked me in 2015 … did I know a guy named Jeffrey Epstein, I probably would’ve said, ‘No.’”
Spacey claimed he’s “since been able to go back and find out” that the airplane used in 2002 “was owned by Jeffrey Epstein” and that he and “this Maxwell woman” were on “some of those flights,” but that he “didn’t know him” and “never spent any time with him.”
Spacey added, “I was with the Clinton Foundation people. That’s who I was with.”
Spacey recalled ending the trip with a visit to Buckingham Palace after Clinton invited him to meet Prince Andrew, whose connections to Epstein are well documented. He denied knowing much about Maxwell, with whom he was photographed in the Throne Room.
“So here’s what I can tell you,” Spacey told Morgan. “This Maxwell woman, she was one of many people to sit down next to me in that throne room. I have no relationship with her. I had no relationship with [Epstein]. I mean, he’s not my friend. I am not a confidant.”
He claimed, “I’ve never spent time with him.”
Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on charges of sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking of minors. He was found dead in his cell at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center the following month.
A representative for Clinton said in a statement at the time that the former president “knows nothing” about Epstein’s “terrible crimes” — and that Clinton has “never been to Little St. James Island, Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico, or his residence in Florida.”
Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.
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