Give the Murdochs credit for knowing how to make a splashy debut. Their UK-based tabloid The Sun launched its US version today, called The US Sun, and keeps its tabloid sensibilities intact with an exposé of Bill Clinton’s journey on Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet. No one alleges that specific improprieties took place on the 2002 flight, and in fact their key source describes Clinton as “a great guy.” However, anytime you’re explaining your photo ops with Ghislaine Maxwell and an Epstein victim, you’re losing:

BILL Clinton poses side-by-side with suspected pimp Ghislaine Maxwell – as the pair board pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s notorious private jet.

The former US President is seen smiling on the steps of the plane – dubbed the Lolita Express – next to Maxwell, in astonishing pictures exclusively obtained by The Sun.

In another image he has his arm round Epstein’s personal masseuse and sex slave Chauntae Davies – who had been ordered to wear a ‘pilot’ shirt to look professional.

Other never-seen-before images show Clinton traveling on the infamous Boeing 727 jet while playing cards and chomping on a cigar.

Davies was one of the witness/victims that the FBI interviewed before arresting Epstein last year. Described as his former masseuse, Davies accused Epstein of raping her, and then intimidating her with tales of his connections to the wealthy and powerful. Now 40 years old, Davies would have been an adult at the time of these photos in 2002, but the pilot’s uniform would have fooled no one. Her first encounter with Epstein had taken place the year before when he committed an unspecified “sex act” during a massage at a point where she was still getting training for such work. Later, Davies has claimed, Epstein repeatedly raped her before she finally left his employment in 2005.

Part of the reason she stayed was Epstein’s intimidation regarding his rich and powerful friends, Davies says. Epstein particularly emphasized his friendship with Prince Andrew, but seeing Bill Clinton stroll onto Epstein’s private jet didn’t hurt Epstein’s argument either. Neither did the rest of the passenger list on the flight, which included Kevin Spacey (!), Chris Tucker, and Clinton’s Secret Service detail.

However, Davies doesn’t offer any juicy tidbits about Clinton’s activities on the flight, one of four trips with Epstein that the Clinton team acknowledges. “Clinton was a great guy on the trip,” Davies recalls, writing in her diary at the time that she “wished he could be president again.” She even went out shopping with the former president for a gift for his daughter Chelsea. If it wasn’t for the context of Epstein and Maxwell and Davies’ own victimization, this would read like a fan’s “my moment with a celeb” recollection.

Still, the Epstein context does exist, as do lots of unanswered questions over who knew what and when. Andrew’s denials don’t cut it with Davies, who insists that the royal had to have known exactly what Epstein was and what the women around him were being pressed into doing. Davies doesn’t make that assumption about Clinton, but then again, she wasn’t around for Clinton’s other trips on the Lolita Express. The number of his flights ranges from the four that Clinton has acknowledged to perhaps as many as twenty-six. His contacts with Epstein go back nearly a decade earlier too, and are deeper than Davies might have known. The Daily Beast reported on the threadbare denials last year:

As early as 1993, records show, Epstein donated $10,000 to the White House Historical Association and attended a donors’ reception hosted by Bill and Hillary Clinton. Around the same time, according to a source familiar with the connection, Epstein visited presidential aide Mark Middleton several times at The White House. Two years later, businesswoman Lynn Forester de Rothschild wrote a personal letter to Clinton thanking him for their talk about the financier. …

When the president released his initial statement on Epstein, he did not explain the multiple other trips he appears to have taken on the financier’s plane—including one flight to Westchester with Epstein, his alleged madam Ghislaine Maxwell, and an “unnamed female.”

Clinton also failed to mention the intimate 1995 fundraising dinner at the Palm Beach home of Revlon mogul Ron Perelman, where Clinton hobnobbed with the likes of Epstein, Don Johnson, and Jimmy Buffett. (Nearby, at Epstein’s own Palm Beach mansion, the money man allegedly abused hundreds of underage girls.)

The Clintons have never told the full truth about their Epstein/Maxwell connections. There’s not much more new here than a few photos, but at least they remind us that those questions are still unanswered.