Bill Clinton in a hot tub and swimming with Ghislaine Maxwell

Bill Clinton is facing new questions about the extent of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein after he featured heavily in the first installment of unsealed documents.

Dozens of photos of Mr Clinton with the late pedophile tycoon were released by the Trump administration, including one showing him in a hot tub and swimming with Ghislaine Maxwell.

The photos are part of the so-called Epstein files, which Congress ordered released by December 19 after mounting public pressure on Donald Trump.

The US Justice Department has said “hundreds of thousands” of additional documents will be released in the coming weeks, making some of the most damaging to the White House public by Christmas.

Democrats accused the Trump administration of censoring the release to protect the US president.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Mr Trump shared a photo of Mr Clinton relaxing in a hot tub: “Whoa!”

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is also featured in the first trove of documents, in which he lies in black tie in the arms of five women.

Maxwell also features outside 10 Downing Street. Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson are also pictured with Epstein and his associates.

A photo of Clinton’s hot tub shows the former president lying half-naked with a woman whose face has been redacted.

A Justice Department employee, Gates McGavick, claimed that the woman whose face was covered up was an Epstein victim.

Another photo below, which appeared to have been taken on the same occasion, also showed Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for allegedly trafficking teenage girls to Epstein, in a dimly lit swimming pool with Mr Clinton.

The former president was photographed on a separate occasion with his arms around a young, blonde woman sitting on his lap in a red velvet chair. The woman is one of several women in the Epstein files whose faces have been redacted.

A similar photo shows Mr. Clinton with his arm around a blonde woman in a red hooded sweatshirt.

Furniture in the background appeared to resemble Epstein’s private jet, nicknamed the “Lolita Express,” which the businessman allegedly used to traffic underage girls to his island in the US Virgin Islands.

Additional photos released on Friday show the 42nd president and Epstein posing around each other in two patterned shirts at the dinner ceremony, along with one of Mr. Clinton with Michael Jackson.

The batch of photos also includes a framed caricature of Mr. Clinton and Epstein preparing to board a plane with two strangers. The drawing was hung in the bathroom, thought to be of Epstein.

Mr Trump has sought to draw attention to Epstein’s relationship with Mr Clinton as scrutiny over his own relationship with a pedophile intensified.

Mr Trump’s own chief of staff, Susie Wiles, said in an interview with Vanity Fair this week that her boss was “on the file” but that “he’s not doing anything bad on the file”.

A spokesman for Mr. Clinton has repeatedly said that the former president had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and had severed ties with him before his 2019 arrest. She has never been accused of any wrongdoing in her relationship with Epstein.

The politician was previously photographed with Epstein several times in the early 1990s.

In September 1993, he and Maxwell were pictured speaking with the then-President at an event for donors to the White House Restoration Project.

Epstein donated $2,000 to Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992.

Through a spokesman, Mr. Clinton described Epstein in 2002 as a “highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist.”

A photo appeared in Vanity Fair of Epstein and Mr. Clinton in Brunei in 2002, traveling on the sex offender’s private jet.

Mr Clinton’s spokesman said after Epstein’s arrest on sex-trafficking charges in 2019 that the former president took four trips on the jet between 2002 and 2003, including “stops in connection with Clinton Foundation work” in Africa.

A 2019 statement confirmed the two men met at Epstein’s Harlem office and his New York apartment. Mr. Clinton is also alleged to have contributed to Epstein’s 50th birthday book in 2003.

Clinton pleaded

James Comer, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has asked both Bill and Hillary Clinton to provide personal statements to the panel’s Epstein investigation.

The committee is offering the former president and former secretary of state a new deposition date in January and threatening possible contempt proceedings if they don’t comply.

The Clintons were first subpoenaed in August and were involved in legal arguments over whether they were required to appear in person.

Epstein also put up a cartoon of himself and Mr Clinton in what appears to be his toilet, new files show.

The photo shows a framed drawing of a muscle-bound Epstein with the former president outside a private jet.

Democrats on Friday night demanded answers from the Justice Department about why so many redactions were made to the documents.

Congressman Ro Khanna, the man behind the Epstein File Transparency Act, said the initial files protected the identities of “rich and powerful men” involved in the activities of pedophiles.

Mr Khanna claimed US Attorney General Pam Bondi could be prosecuted or impeached after “months of uncertainty”.

The 119 pages in the New York grand jury document are “completely blacked out,” with no explanation for the revisions required by the act even though a federal judge agreed to release it, he said.

Fox News reported that the same correctional standards were applied to politically exposed individuals and government officials as if they were victims.

Meanwhile, White House officials mocked Mr. Clinton for the released photos of him with Epstein and various women.

White House communications adviser Steven Cheung captioned one picture: “Slick Willie! Bill Clinton just chillin’ without a care in the world. Little did he know…”