WASHINGTON — Former President Bill Clinton shocked his own aides ahead of Moroccan King Mohammed VI’s 2002 wedding by asking if he could bring two unrelated plus-ones — the now-notorious Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell — to the royal nuptials, The Post has learned.
Clinton, who had earned goodwill in the North African nation by attending the funeral of the king’s father Hassan II three years prior, beamed with Epstein, Maxwell and his daughter Chelsea in a group photo shared exclusively with The Post for this story.
“[Clinton] brought them as guests to a king’s wedding. I mean, it almost sounds made up,” said one source familiar with the matter.
“How many times in your life have you been invited as a guest of a guest at a wedding?”
The request was seen by members of Clinton’s own team as rude and has been lore in Democratic circles for more than two decades.
The account is surfacing as Clinton downplays his ties to Epstein — one day before a congressionally mandated deadline for the Justice Department to release files on his crimes, which were not publicly known at the time of the wedding.
“They insisted, they pushed” to bring Maxwell and Epstein, who died in prison awaiting trial in 2019, a second source said.
“[Former first lady] Hillary [Clinton] was in the Senate, so she couldn’t go. Chelsea very much wanted to go, and the president very much wanted to go,” said the second person.
“The idea that they would take [Epstein] was a head-scratcher. But nonetheless, the Clinton office moved forward and made this request … to bring these two guests, and that’s what happened.”
It’s unclear what exactly the king’s aides said upon receiving the request, but “obviously they said yes,” and the ex-president joined Epstein and Maxwell aboard the financier’s “Lolita Express” private jet for a flight to Morocco. Chelsea Clinton, then a student at Oxford University, traveled independently.
“What kind of person would impose [and] bring someone to a wedding?” the second source exclaimed.
“In my own family, unless you’re married or engaged, you’re not bringing a guest.”
At one point, Chelsea Clinton insisted that the group take a photo together, the second source said — with Abdeslam Jaidi, Morocco’s former ambassador to the United Nations, and an unidentified man crowding in for the snap, a grainy version of which was shared with The Post.
“It was important to her to take a picture with her father,” this insider said.
“Everyone sat for the ceremony part and then moved to a dinner portion,” the source said. “Clinton and Epstein and Ghislaine sat with the king. It was like a formal, sit-down, black tie, fancy, fancy wedding.”
Both sources said the ex-president is dishonestly downplaying his former links to Epstein and Maxwell and do not fully understand Clinton’s draw to the pair.
Neither believe Clinton, who was impeached for his affair with a 22-year-old White House intern, was aware that Epstein was trafficking young women and girls, but say that Clinton’s relationship with him reflects poorly on his judgment.
“A lot of people around the Clintons had pushed young women on him,” the second source said, though they were unaware of any instance of Epstein doing so.
“The guy seemed like a total swindler and BS artist. It wasn’t uncommon that Clinton and those people would be taken by him.”
‘Lore in Clintonworld for a long, long time’
The July 2002 festivities in the Moroccan capital followed a private ceremony that March between the then 38-year-old monarch and computer scientist Lalla Salma Bennani, whom he later divorced.
According to public reports,1,500 people were invited to the ceremony, including royals and leaders from across Europe and the Arab world, such as Jordanian Queen Rania.
The second source said that they believed fewer people actually showed up, ballparking a figure closer to 250.
“The wedding ceremony wasn’t huge. The dinner wasn’t huge. Neither of them were big … it was a relatively private, you know, high society, tightly attended event,” this person said.
The people familiar with the matter who spoke with The Post said they are astonished that it took so long for the bizarre situation to be reported — especially with information from Clinton’s many flights with Epstein long in the public domain.
The Post’s sources believe Clinton wasn’t merely mooching a free flight out of Epstein.
“The king of Morocco would have sent seven 747s to get him to get him to that wedding,” the second source said.
“These are people that he just all of a sudden, out of thin air, takes to a wedding in Morocco. I mean, it was totally crazy… it was lore in Clintonworld for a long, long time.”
When exactly Clinton broke off his friendship with Epstein remains murky, though his office has said he cut off contact in 2005, three years before Epstein’s misconduct was first widely known when he pleaded guilty to state sex crimes in Florida.
Other former Epstein associates, including President Trump and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, have downplayed their ties to Epstein.
Clinton spokesman Angel Ureña said in 2019 that “President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York.”
“In 2002 and 2003, President Clinton took a total of four trips on Jeffrey Epstein’s airplane: one to Europe, one to Asia, and two to Africa, which included stops in connection with the work of the Clinton Foundation,” Ureña said at the time.
“He had one meeting with Epstein in his Harlem office in 2002, and around the same time made one brief visit to Epstein’s New York apartment with a staff member and his security detail. He’s not spoken to Epstein in well over a decade and has never been to Little St. James Island, Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico, or his residence in Florida.”
Ureña would not deny to The Post on Wednesday that Clinton invited Epstein and Maxwell to the wedding, saying: “I don’t know how many times we need to say there was travel more than 20 years ago before he was cut off. Apparently, we need to one more time. But nice try.”
The Moroccan embassy in Washington and a rep for Chelsea Clinton did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The first source for this story said that Clinton aides have buzzed about a surprising and “very prosaic” reason why the ex-president finally broke off contact with Epstein.
“[Epstein] told a series of tall tales that Clinton just grated against and rubbed him the wrong way, and the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back was about Epstein claiming that he invented the derivatives market,” one source said.
“Clinton is a very sophisticated individual as it relates to the economy and finance… And hearing someone say that really pissed him off because then it makes you question, ‘What else does he tell us about that’s bulls–t?’”
