Convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein pleaded the Fifth Amendment in court to avoid having to admit to his personal friendship with former President Bill Clinton.

Court documents (p. 34) reviewed by The Daily Caller reveal that Epstein took the Fifth to avoid self-incrimination in a deposition when directly asked, “Do you know former President Clinton personally?” Epstein made the plea in a 2010-2011 civil case between Epstein and Florida lawyer Brad Edwards, who sued Epstein on behalf of some of Epstein’s alleged victims.

Epstein was convicted in 2008 in Florida for soliciting underage teenage prostitutes. Epstein was represented by attorney Alan Dershowitz and others. He subsequently served 13 months in prison. Clinton reportedly flew to Africa on Epstein’s plane with actors Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker in September 2002, but court documents from the Edwards case make clear that Clinton flew with Epstein on numerous occasions, according to flight logs.

Epstein’s plea blocked Clinton from being called to testify in the 2010-2011 civil case. Epstein similarly pleaded the Fifth when asked if he socialized with underage girls in the company of former Democratic New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, Donald Trump, magician David Copperfield, and attorney Alan Dershowitz.

Edwards had reason to believe that Clinton’s testimony would be vital to the case.

“Edwards notified Epstein’s attorneys of his intent to take Bill Clinton’s deposition. Edwards possessed a legitimate basis for doing so,” according to a “Statement of Undisputed Facts” in the civil case.

The reasons for Clinton’s potential testimony, according to the undisputed facts, included:

“(a) Clinton was friends with Ghislaine Maxwell who was Epstein’s longtime companion and helped to run Epstein’s companies, kept images of naked underage children on her computer, helped to recruit underage children for Epstein, engaged in lesbian sex with underage females that she procured for Epstein, and photographed underage females in sexually explicit poses and kept child pornography on her computer;” “(b) it was national news when Clinton traveled with Epstein aboard Epstein’s private plane to Africa and the news articles classified Clinton as Epstein’s friend. (c) the complaint filed on behalf of Jane Doe No. 102 stated generally that she was required by Epstein to be sexually exploited by not only Epstein but also Epstein’s “adult male peers, including royalty, politicians, academicians, businessmen, andlor other professional and personal acquaintances” — categories Clinton and acquaintances of Clinton fall into. The flight logs showed Clinton traveling on Epstein’s plane on numerous occasions between 2002 and 2005.”

“Epstein’s personal phone directory from his computer contains e-mail addresses for Clinton along with 21 phone numbers for him, including those for his assistant [Doug Band], his schedulers, and what appear to be Clinton’s personal numbers. This information certainly leads one to believe that Clinton might well be a source of relevant information and efforts to obtain discovery from him were reasonably calculated to lead to admissible evidence,” the statement read.

Edwards did not return requests for comment for this report.

Clinton’s relationship with Epstein and Epstein’s friend (and Clinton dinner companion) Ghislaine Maxwell was detailed in a 2003 New York magazine profile of Epstein.

“Friends of the two say that Maxwell, whose social life has always been higher-octane than Epstein’s, lent a little pizzazz to the lower-profile Epstein,” according the magazine. “Indeed, at a party at Maxwell’s house, her friends say, one is just as apt to see Russian ladies of the night as one is to see Prince Andrew. The Oxford-educated Maxwell, described by many as a man-eater [she flies her own helicopter and was recently seen dining with Clinton at Nello’s on Madison Avenue], lives in her own townhouse a few blocks away.”

Maxwell was photographed with Prince Andrew and a 17-year-old, alleged Epstein sex slave Virginia Roberts in 2001. Roberts claimed that Maxwell recruited her to be Epstein’s masseuse when she was 15 years old.

“Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of twenty-first-century science,” Clinton told New York magazine through a spokesman in 2003. “I especially appreciated his insights and generosity during the recent trip to Africa to work on democratization, empowering the poor, citizen service, and combating HIV/AIDS.”

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