Doug Band, former aide to Bill Clinton, repeatedly tells panel he cannot recall interactions with Epstein: Sources

(WASHINGTON) — Doug Band, a former close adviser to President Bill Clinton, repeatedly told lawmakers that he could not recall his involvement on several topics related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, multiple sources said following Band’s appearance Tuesday before the House Oversight Committee.

Band, who began his tenure with Clinton as an intern in the mid-1990s, was questioned for four hours by the panel as part of its ongoing probe of the government’s handling of the investigations into Epstein. 

Multiple sources familiar with his testimony said Band had no evidence or information that President Clinton ever went to Epstein’s island, Little St. James, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, despite telling Vanity Fair on the record in 2020 that Clinton had visited the island. Band told the committee that he didn’t remember why he had made that claim to Vanity Fair.

Often described as one of the architects of Clinton’s post-presidential endeavors, including the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative, Band was pressed about his own communications with Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, which were made public earlier this year by the Justice Department as part of the release of files mandated by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Emails between Band and Maxwell included talk of meetings with Epstein and numerous exchanges containing suggestive innuendo and cheeky nicknames for each other like “babycakes” and “booboo,” according to files released by the DOJ.

The bulk of the messages were exchanged between 2001-2004, before Epstein first faced criminal charges in Florida in 2006. 

Band, according to sources, told committee members that he didn’t recall sending individual emails to Maxwell, but he confirmed that an email address associated with Clinton that was found in the Epstein files was Band’s and that no one else had access to it.

Band stated that he took steps to insulate Clinton from Maxwell as Band became aware of allegations, according to the sources.

Band stated that he never had sexual contact of any kind with Maxwell and didn’t recall ever being introduced to any woman or girl associated with Maxwell, sources said.

Band also said he did not recall ever engaging with Epstein on any of the flights he took with Clinton on Epstein’s private jet, and did not recall having conversations with Epstein, said sources.

“We know that Mr. Band set up several meetings between Clinton and Epstein,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., told reporters prior to Band’s appearance. “We know Mr. Band accompanied Mr. Clinton on several flights on Epstein’s jet. We know that Mr. Band also had a lot of communication with Ms. Maxwell, so that’ll be a topic of several questions.”

Band, 54, has not been accused of any wrongdoing. His appearance before the Oversight Committee was voluntary and was not recorded. The committee has typically released transcripts of interviews after they are reviewed for accuracy and redacted to remove any potential references to alleged victims.

Earlier this year, Band told The New York Times that his messages with Maxwell occurred when he was in his 20s and unmarried — and he denied any romantic involvement with Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex-trafficking and other offenses.

“There was absolutely no physical relationship that occurred between us. Ever,” Band said in a statement to the Times, in which he referred to Maxwell as “a monster.”

Records created by Epstein’s pilots made public through civil litigation show Clinton — and an entourage that typically included Band — aboard Epstein’s plane on more than two dozen flight legs in 2002-03, but none of those flights went to the island, according to the pilot’s logs. Clinton, Epstein and Maxwell have all denied that the former president had ever been to Little St. James.

“He never, absolutely never went. And I can be sure of that because there’s no way he would have gone,” Maxwell told then then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in a recorded interview last summer.

“I’ve never been to that island,” Clinton said in his own interview with the Oversight Committee in February.

The former president has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection to his association with Epstein. He has said he stopped interacting with Epstein before any criminal allegations surfaced and has denied knowledge of any of Epstein’s crimes.

Clinton told the committee that he and Band were once “close,” and that Band had been one of the people he tasked to “operationalize” plans to develop the Clinton Global Initiative in his early post-presidency years.

“He worked for me for years,” Clinton said. “[H]e arranged airplane flights and things like that and was doing work on the first Clinton Global Initiative in 2005. And I know that he knew both Epstein and Maxwell. I do not know to what extent he was in contact with them.”

In her interview with Blanche, Maxwell said she began spending time with Clinton after he left the White House in 2001, as he was forging his post-presidential path through the establishment of the Clinton Foundation and, later, the Clinton Global Initiative.

“I was part of the beginning process of the Clinton Global Initiative. And that was something that I helped with and that was me, and Epstein may have helped me help them,” she said, according to a transcript of the July 2025 interview.

“I started spending time with the former president and with Doug and his team,” Maxwell said. “I had no purpose, really, other than I had — obviously offered something. I don’t know, ideas.” 

In recent weeks the committee has heard from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and two of Epstein’s former assistants, Sarah Kellen and Lesley Groff.

Later this summer, interviews are scheduled with former Obama White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, former Epstein attorney Alan Dershowitz, and Epstein’s former private banker at JPMorgan Chase, Jes Staley.

Comer has indicated that a report on the investigation’s findings will be issued by the end of the year.