The same week President Donald Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law, a decades-old detail rocketed back into the headlines: Bill Clinton welcomed Jeffrey Epstein to the White House 17 times during his presidency, and the former president himself boarded Epstein’s infamous private jet – dubbed the “Lolita Express” – another 17 times.

Flight logs, visitor records, and Secret Service documents – already public for years – show the two men were far from casual acquaintances. Epstein visited the Executive Mansion twice on some days, met with Clinton aides, and even brought along female companions on several occasions, according to logs first reported by The New York Post and Fox News in 2019 and 2020.

The timing couldn’t be more explosive.

For eight years under Barack Obama and Joe Biden, the Department of Justice sat on thousands of pages of federal Epstein records. Victims begged for transparency. Congress held hearings. Not one Democrat administration lifted a finger to declassify a single page.

Then, on November 20, 2025, Donald Trump signed the bipartisan bill forcing Attorney General Pam Bondi to release everything unclassified within 30 days. Suddenly, prominent Democrats and left-leaning media personalities who stayed silent for a decade are flooding cable news expressing “deep concern” for Epstein’s victims and demanding “immediate justice.”

The flip has stunned even jaded Washington observers.

“Eight years of total radio silence on the biggest elite pedophile scandal in modern history,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on the House floor Thursday. “Zero pressure from the left when their own former president was literally the most frequent flier on that plane. Trump signs one bill and overnight they discover morality? Give me a break.”

Flight logs show Clinton flew on Epstein’s Boeing 727 at least 17 times between 2002 and 2005, sometimes with Secret Service detail, sometimes without. Destinations included Africa, Europe, and Asia. Epstein’s brother Mark testified under oath that Clinton was on the plane “numerous times.” Clinton’s office has always insisted the trips were for Clinton Foundation work and that the former president “knows nothing” about Epstein’s crimes.

Yet the former president’s name appears more than 50 times in Epstein’s infamous “black book,” and photos place the two men together on multiple continents.

Critics point out the stark contrast in treatment. In the 1990s, when Monica Lewinsky – then a 22-year-old White House intern – became embroiled in scandal with Clinton, top Democrats and feminist leaders rushed to discredit her. Gloria Steinem, Patricia Ireland, and even Hillary Clinton’s team painted Lewinsky as a stalker or worse. Lewinsky spent decades rebuilding her life while Clinton remained a party icon.

Fast-forward to 2025: the moment Trump forces open the federal vault, some of the same voices who once shredded Lewinsky now position themselves as defenders of Epstein’s victims – victims whose pleas they ignored while their party controlled the DOJ.

“People have receipts,” said Fox News host Sean Hannity Wednesday night. “Seventeen visits. Seventeen flights. Eight years of total inaction. And now the outrage performance begins the day a Republican forces the files open. The American people aren’t stupid.”

Even some Democrats admit the optics are brutal.

“It’s hard to argue with the timeline,” said former Obama advisor David Axelrod on CNN. “The lack of urgency before was… noticeable.”

As the December 20 deadline approaches, legal experts predict the unredacted federal files will include:

Complete Secret Service logs of every Epstein White House visit
Full passenger manifests for every Lolita Express flight (previous versions were heavily redacted)
FBI interview reports with high-profile individuals
Any correspondence between Epstein’s team and Clinton Foundation staff

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed the controversy head-on Thursday: “President Trump promised transparency on day one. He just delivered it. Anyone clutching pearls now had eight years to do the exact same thing and chose silence. The president is focused on the victims – period.”

Social media is already ablaze. The hashtag #17 trended nationwide within hours, with millions of users posting side-by-side screenshots of Clinton-Epstein photos next to recent Democrat statements demanding “justice.”

Whether the coming document dump will contain new bombshells about the former president or dozens of other boldface names remains to be seen. One thing, however, is crystal clear: the political establishment’s sudden awakening to Epstein’s victims is happening only because Donald Trump just made silence impossible.

The clock is ticking. Thirty days and counting.