Kevin Spacey is addressing questions about his participation in a 2002 humanitarian trip to Africa that included former President Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein, the shadowy financier who died of suicide in jail while facing charges of sex trafficking minors.
The “House of Cards” actor, whose career dwindled amid numerous sexual misconduct allegations, said Tuesday that he didn’t know Epstein or his since-convicted accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, when he flew on Epstein’s private jet as part of a group participating in the program on AIDS and HIV awareness.
“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 Morgan asked Spacey to clarify, he said, “There were young girls on those flights.”
The actor’s association with Epstein became public when flight logs for Epstein’s jet were recently authenticated and Spacey’s name was found alongside Clinton’s. The names of numerous high-profile passengers were also on flight logs for the jet, but the logs themselves are not implications of wrongdoing.
Spacey said Tuesday that he had no idea who Epstein was when he boarded his plane as part of a the eight-day trip to promote AIDS prevention, which he said he joined after becoming friends with Clinton, who invited him.
HuffPost has reached out to a representative of Bill 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 told Morgan that he’s “since been able to go back and find out” that the private jet used on the 2002 tour “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 close connections with Epstein have drawn controversy. Spacey denied knowing much about Maxwell, with whom he was photographed in the palace’s 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 added, “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, before being tried.
At the time, a representative of Clinton said in a statement that the former president knew “nothing” about Epstein’s “terrible crimes” and that Clinton had “never been to Little St. James Island, Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico, or his residence in Florida.”
Spacey has faced several accusations of sexual abuse since 2017; however, he has recently won cases involving some of those allegations. In 2022, a jury in New York sided with Spacey in a lawsuit that had accused him of molesting a then-14-year-old actor in 1986. Last year, a London jury found him not guilty of nine charges of sexual assault involving four theater actors. Spacey faces another trial in the U.K. over a British man’s claim of a sexual assault in 2008; that trial will likely be held next year,