The Epstein Emails Include a Reference to "Bubba" — Some Suspect It's Bill Clinton

Content Warning: This article contains references to sexual imagery.

The fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein emails released by House Democrats on Nov. 12 is still ongoing and implicates some of the most powerful men in America. While much of the discussion around these emails has been about what they mean for Donald Trump, some have wondered if any other presidents are mentioned.

Specifically, Bill Clinton is known to have had some sort of relationship with Jeffrey Epstein before the latter's death, although its nature is still the subject of some speculation. That's why a reference to Bubba in the emails has some people wondering whether that's a reference to the 42nd president. Here's what we know.

In one of the more than 20,000 emails that have now been released to the public, Mark Epstein, Jeffrey's brother, speculates about whether Russian President Vladimir Putin has a picture of "Trump blowing Bubba."

The email has gone viral on social media in part because Bill Clinton's nickname has been Bubba since his 1992 presidential campaign. He earned that nickname because of his folksy manner, and it's stuck with him ever since.

The email chain is from March of 2018, and in it, Mark makes a series of comments about his brother's relationship with Trump. After Jeffrey explains that he is with Steven Bannon, Mark asks him to ask Bannon whether Putin has the image.

He never says Bill Clinton by name, but the known association between Epstein and Clinton has many convinced that Mark is referring to the former president, who has publicly been a fierce critic of President Trump.

Mark's comments might lead one to believe that he knows something about a possible sexual connection between Clinton and Trump. While we shouldn't rule anything out, the far more likely explanation is that Mark was joking about the leverage that Putin might or might not have over Trump, and came up with an outlandish example of something that Putin could have over the U.S. president.

It's never been definitively confirmed that Putin has anything over Trump, and there is nothing else in these emails or anywhere else to suggest that Clinton and Trump ever had a sexual relationship.

Trump was friendly with the Clintons in the years before he became the leader of the Republican Party, and he publicly claimed to be a Democrat for long stretches of his life.

It's worth remembering that just because someone once wrote something down in an email, that doesn't mean it's true. That doesn't mean that Clinton or Trump are not guilty of wrongdoing here, and the emails do prove that Trump especially was connected to Epstein.

What's less clear, though, is whether the specific incident described in this email ever actually happened, or whether it's just something stupid someone said once.