In a surprising move, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles reportedly publicly challenged President Donald Trump‘s persistent claim that former President Bill Clinton had visited infamous sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein‘s island.
Wiles’ comments appear in a Vanity Fair profile released on Tuesday detailing the first year of Trump’s second term from her point-of-view. In the article, she offered an unusually candid appraisal of Trump’s administration, internal dynamics, and unresolved controversies surrounding the Epstein files.
Among the revelations, Wiles pushed back on Trump’s repeated claims that Clinton had visited Epstein’s secluded Little Saint James island, saying there is no evidence to support that claim and that Trump’s statements were simply incorrect. For months, amidst scrutiny about his connections with Epstein, Trump has highlighted Clinton’s relationship with the disgraced financier. Trump claimed Clinton had been to Epstein’s island “28 times.”
According to Vanity Fair’s account, Wiles admitted that “there is no evidence” that Clinton visited the island, she stated, and “the president was wrong about that.”
Since the profile’s publication, Wiles called it “a disingenously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.” She claimed that “significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story…”
The article published early this morning is a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.
Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the…
— Susie Wiles (@SusieWiles) December 16, 2025
Wiles had long been a political operative in Florida when Trump named her as the first female Chief of Staff the day after he won the 2024 presidential election.
In the profile, which is reportedly based on 11 interviews with the Chief of Staff, Wiles gave scathing assessments of several key figures in the Trump administration and detailed several disagreements with the president. She apparently told writer Chris Whipple that the President had “an alcoholic’s personality,” dubbed Vice President J.D. Vance “a conspiracy theorist,” and former Senior Adviser and Tesla CEO Elon Musk “an avowed ketamine user” and an “odd, odd duck” whose actions weren’t always “rational” and sometimes left her “aghast.”
After Epstein’s 2019 arrest and death in custody, the public and the media have been piecing together who may have been involved in his network from flight logs, legal filings, and witness statements to map the social network around Epstein’s wealth and criminal enterprise.
Clinton has consistently denied visiting the island, and fact-checked reporting shows that Epstein’s flight logs and Secret Service records do not substantiate island visits, though they do list Clinton on various flights with Epstein tied to foundation or official engagements. However, the late survivor Virginia Giuffre claimed in 2011 that she saw Clinton arrive on Little Saint James in the early 2000’s, though she never accused him of any wrongdoing.
