Vicky Ward Reveals It Wasn’t Bill Clinton That Showed Up at Vanity Fair Offices to Spike an Article — It Was Jeffrey Epstein

Former Vanity Fair writer Vicky Ward pushed back hard on reports that Bill Clinton showed up at the magazine’s offices to spike a Jeffrey Epstein profile.

Ward is the well-respected journalist whose name shows up a LOT in unsealed documents surrounding Epstein’s case, but not because she’s involved in anything sordid. She was the first to write a lengthy profile of the well-connected financier turned sex trafficker in 2002 before any knowledge of his criminal behavior came to light.

In Thursday’s release, we learned that Virginia Giuffre wrote in a since-released email, “When I was doing some research into VF yesterday, it does concern me what they could want to write about me considering that B.Clinton walked into VF and threatened them not to write sex-trafficing [sic] articles about his good friend J.E.”

This set off a firestorm of poorly sourced reports that the former president barged into a magazine’s editorial offices — just two years after he left office — even though it’s remarkably unlikely. Former Vanity Fair Editor-in-Chief Graydon Carter vigorously denied this, telling The Telegraph, “This categorically did not happen.”

It would be difficult to find anyone closer to this story than Ward, so credit to the bookers at CNN This Morning for having her on to clarify what precisely happened.

For her part, Ward was gracious in her explanation, not blaming Giuffre but attributing her emailed account to misheard gossip. When asked by Audie Cornish for context, Ward replied:

I never heard that that happened. What I wonder is if Virginia Roberts is hearing. Gossip. I’m getting it getting it slightly wrong, because what did happen back in 2002 when I was profiled to write about Jeffrey Epstein, I actually prefer to write about his finances. And remember, this is a time when nobody knew who this guy was other than he lived in the most expensive townhouse in Manhattan. I learned not of the horrific sex crimes going on that we now know about increasingly in more detail. I did hear about the story of two sisters, Maria and Annie Farmer, and they were on the record detailing to me at the time the abuse they had suffered at the hands of Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein. When Jeffrey Epstein realized that I was in possession of their allegations, he appeared in the offices of Vanity Fair. I knew about this because the fact checker, who was fact checking my piece at the time, sent me an email saying, Oh my God, he’s standing here in the office. And as I’ve said before, the Farmer sister’s allegations were suddenly cut from the piece that was ultimately published.

Ward later explained how she was assigned to look at how Epstein got his money and “why all these powerful boldface names that we’re reading about now were drawn to him.”

She expressed regret that she was not aware of the sex crimes but finished by asking “Why were all these scientists, why were later on, you know, names? We know Bill Gates. Why were these academics? What were they? What did Jeffrey Epstein have that attracted them all to him? We still don’t really understand the answer to that question.”

Watch above via CNN.