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 a subject of discussion in Democratic circles for more than two decades.
The account is surfacing as Clinton downplays his ties to Epstein — and as the Justice Department faces a congressionally mandated Friday deadline to release files on the financier’s crimes, which were not publicly known at the time of the Moroccan king’s wedding.
A second source said the 42nd president’s staff “insisted” and “pushed” to bring Maxwell and Epstein, who died in jail in August 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
“[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 asked rhetorically.
“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 why he was so drawn to the pair.
Neither believe Clinton, who was impeached over his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, was aware that Epstein was trafficking young women and girls, but both 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, Rabat, followed a private ceremony that March binding 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.
The second source said that they believed fewer people actually showed up, estimating a guest count 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 were astonished that it took so long for the bizarre situation to be reported — especially since information about Clinton’s many flights with Epstein has long been in the public domain.
The exact reason for Clinton’s invitation to the exclusive event remains unclear, but The Post’s sources believe there was more at play than the prospect of a free trans-Atlantic flight.
“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.”
Clinton’s office has said he cut ties with Epstein in 2005, three years before the pervert pleaded guilty to child sex crimes in Florida.
Other former Epstein associates, including President Trump and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, have downplayed or expressed regret over their ties to him.
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” purported reason for 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?’”
