Clinton, Maxwell and the inside story of their trip to Britain

Throne Room picture of Maxwell and Spacey is a breach of protocol that few will want to excuse

WHEN Bill Clinton flew into London in September 2002, doors naturally flew open for him. He had stepped down as president of the United States after two terms only the year before, and was on his way to address the Labour Party conference.

Among the opened doors were those to Buckingham Palace, when the Duke of York invited him to tour the Queen’s residence. At the time, no one could imagine the visit would come back to haunt those taking part.

But it has, following The Telegraph’s discovery of the photograph of Ghislaine Maxwell sitting on the ornate seat the Queen used for her coronation in 1953, in breach of all protocol.

Next to her is Mr Clinton’s friend Kevin Spacey – then Hollywood royalty and shortly to become artistic director of the Old Vic – in the place normally occupied by the Duke of Edinburgh. Ms Maxwell is now ensconced in the far more spartan surroundings of a police cell in New Hampshire after her arrest on Thursday, following a year-long investigation by the FBI.

She is charged with helping to recruit and groom underage girls for her ex-boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier, a friend of the Duke, and faces questions over the extent of the Duke’s knowledge of events.

Spacey’s career and reputation were left in tatters after he was accused in 2017 of making unwanted sexual advances to a 14-year-old actor and a string of other young men. Charges against him were later dropped.

And the Duke is now at the centre of the scandal surrounding Epstein’s sordid activities, with US prosecutors saying they would “welcome” his testimony as part of the ongoing FBI investigation.

At the time, the photograph, had it been released to the public, would have been seen as a light-hearted – if somewhat disrespectful – memento of a celebrity visit. But with the passing of time, the picture is now raising eyebrows around the world, and has come to assume a much more disturbing significance, showing as it does just how close Maxwell was at the time to her friend the Duke.

It was the Duke after all who had invited her and Spacey, along with Mr Clinton, to the private tour of Buckingham Palace. Mr Clinton was in London en route to the Labour Party conference in Blackpool, where he would be guest of honour.

On the evening of his speech, Mr Clinton expressed a desire for a burger and was accompanied by prime minister Tony Blair’s then director of communications Alastair Campbell to a McDonald’s on Blackpool’s Golden Mile – to the astonishment of the locals.

Among the burger party in Blackpool was Spacey, who had come up from London with Mr Clinton. Before arriving in the UK, Mr Clinton had spent seven days on a tour of Africa, along with Maxwell, Spacey and fellow American actor Chris Tucker, on Epstein’s private jet, a Boeing 727 reportedly nicknamed the “Lolita Express”. Photographs obtained by The Sun

day Telegraph show Mr Clinton posing for the cameras with his arm around Maxwell on the steps to the plane.

It is not clear if Epstein was present on that humanitarian trip to Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Mozambique, and South Africa organised for the Clinton Foundation. Flight logs appear to show the former president was a frequent user of Epstein’s jet, taking at least 26 trips on the plane.

In the early years of his post-presidency, Mr Clinton took four trips on the plane with stops in Europe, Africa and Asia, in at least one case with Epstein present. Indeed the same year as the Africa trip Mr Clinton praised Epstein for his charitable work in a magazine profile. “Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of 21st Century science,” he told New York magazine through a spokesman.

“I especially appreciated his insights and generosity during the recent trip to Africa to work on democratisation, empowering the poor, citizen service, and combating HIV/Aids.” Last year Mr Clinton – against whom there are no accusations – firmly distanced himself from Epstein. Angel Ureña, his spokesman, said on Twitter that the former president knew nothing of Epstein’s “terrible crimes”.

At the end of the Africa tour, the party arrived in London, where the Duke invited Mr Clinton, Spacey and Maxwell to visit Buckingham Palace. There is no record on the Court Circular, which details all the official engagements of members of the Royal family, suggesting it was an unofficial, impromptu affair arranged by the Duke.

The Throne Room is normally only accessible through public tours of the palace or during state visits and official royal functions. For anyone other than the Queen or the Duke of Edinburgh to sit on the chairs is unthinkable and would invite disciplinary action if it were a member of staff, according to sources close to the palace.

Rumours had circulated previously about the visit to the palace, though officials dismissed them, saying the Duke of York had “no recollection” of it taking place. It is not thought that Epstein was present, although he had previously visited Sandringham and Windsor Castle along with Maxwell, as a guest of the Duke. In June 2000, Epstein and Maxwell were among a starstudded guest list at a party hosted by the Queen at Windsor. The Dance of the Decades event marked four royal birthdays including the Duke’s 40th. The Duke later told the BBC that Epstein was there at his invitation, and was to some extent Ms Maxwell’s “plus one”.

In December that year, the Duke threw Maxwell a surprise birthday party at Sandringham, the Queen’s estate in Norfolk, with Epstein among the guests. He described it as a “straightforward shooting weekend”.

A year before the palace photograph was taken, the Duke appeared with Maxwell in another picture. This one showed him with his arm around a 17-year-old teenager called Virginia Roberts, now Virginia Roberts Giuffre, at Maxwell’s Belgravia House, a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace.

Ms Giuffre claims she and the Duke danced at Tramp nightclub in London before having sex that night. The Duke has consistently denied her claims.

Ten months on, Maxwell was posing for the camera again, this time at the very heart of the British establishment. How different that Buckingham Palace photograph looks now.

‘Jeffrey [Epstein] is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist’