The presidential search advisory committee member whose connections to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were uncovered by The Alligator in January testified before Congress June 30 about his relationship with the pair.
Throughout the 125-page transcribed testimony, Doug Band, who was former President Bill Clinton’s right-hand man in the 2000s, said he didn’t “recall” in response to nearly every question asked about his experiences with Epstein and Maxwell.
The Alligator’s previous investigation into the depth of Band’s relationship with the two highlighted flirtatious emails between Band and Maxwell, insinuating a romantic relationship Band has vehemently denied. The Alligator couldn’t confirm any criminal wrongdoing or whether he knew about the crimes being committed by Epstein and Maxwell at the time.
In the testimony, he also said he doesn’t recall many interactions with Maxwell, although he did say they were “friends socially.”
Emails discovered by The Alligator across the last seven months and Band’s June testimony show hundreds of interactions between him and Maxwell, which highlight contradictions between statements he made before Congress and emails he sent in the mid-2000s.
Despite denying visiting Little Saint James, Epstein’s infamous island in the Caribbean where children were believed to have been abused by him and his co-conspirators, emails connected to Band insinuate he was at least invited.
Band previously indicated he often used an email labeled “WJC.” When asked by the House Oversight Committee in June if all the emails sent from the WJC email account were his, Band said, “I believe so.”
Other emails available in the Epstein file database also implicate Band as the sender and owner of the account.
In April 2002, the WJC sender wrote in an email to Maxwell: “Email it to my reg email Dband@owjc.org.”
In another email to the WJC account, Maxwell addressed the recipient as “my dearest Douglas.”
On Aug. 25, 2002, the account sent an email to Maxwell indicating the sender had been invited to the “island.”
“2 what? Comeback to ny to play with me, fun week here,” reads the email, which was sent from an account ending in WJC, Clinton’s initials. “Island looks unlikely for me. Going with wjc on a brief vacation then back for 2 days. Can't do hawaii either.”
Despite denying having had anything more than a friendship with Maxwell, several emails further indicate a more serious relationship between the pair in the 2000s.
On Dec. 16, 2002, Maxwell sent an email to a redacted email address:
“Booboo, I am in PB - we came back form the Island for a few days and may come to NY tom - are you around? I am very ill and require immediate medical attention - I am suffering from boobooitis - a very serious condition. Without a booboo fix the symptoms become very pronounced - a withdrawn far away look, frequent sighing, prone to cries into the night that sound like Shakespeare sonnets that sound like this - oh Douglas - oh Douglas - wherefore art though Douglas.”
On the same day, the WJC account also sent an email to a redacted address:
“I love it You make me miss booboo even more My boobooitis is also reaching epic poportions I am here all week Lots going on but will be In boobooville the second you arrive From [redacted] Mon.”
In December 2002, Maxwell and the WJC account exchanged a number of details about their plans to meet up while they were both in New York City.
“We have lots to catch up on and even more given I am going to naomis party tonight at ciprianis with brenda, yikes I miss you, how long are you here for? We have to have alone time soon or I will be even more ill than you booboo,” Maxwell wrote to the WJC account.
The WJC account wrote back, “Ooooooo - you do love trouble. I would love some private time - I am going to stay in NY until Fri evening and then come back down to PB. I obviously have flexible plans as I was not even meant to be in NY and have just started making plans - we can do everything including breakfast!!!!! Oops I get saucy around Christmas + of course I am under doctors orders - it says a heavy dose of Booboo as my prescription - sometimes being sick can be fun!”
In an email several months later, the WJC account wrote to Maxwell, “By the way, the social matchmaker part is pretty right on... I would have told them that you are my pimp but that at the same time, you are my lover.”
In 2001, Band wrote to Maxwell from his personal email confirming he and Clinton use the same phone: “you back? another way to get in touch with me quicker is on my blackbery - actually the presidnet's but we share it wjc@imcingular.com.”
However, he denied sharing a Blackberry phone with Clinton in his June testimony.
In 2002, Maxwell asked the WJC account if she could bring her “crew” with her to the movies.
“We’re going to the movies and then we will meet you - 2 questions where + there is a crew here - + 2 Brazilians - can they come too if we come - thoughts,” Maxwell wrote.
In 2004, Band sent an email to Maxwell appearing to detail a business deal.
“Attias met with mary today / She likes him a lot, smart of him / They talked money and mary was shy about it and they talked low six figures, I / would like to see her do better / Thx, its imp for wjc/me to get her taken care of / She did a lot in the old days… / Surely he's paying people tons so 250k shouldn't be out of the question / Hope florida is fun / I'm never coming back,” he wrote in the email.
Gustavo Lage, a criminal lawyer and former prosecutor at the Miami-Dade County State Attorney’s Office, said it would take more than just documents found in the Epstein files to determine any criminal wrongdoing on Band’s part, like perjury or lying under oath.
“They can use the statements that he made before Congress and the transcript from Congress against him, “ he said. “But you would have to have somebody come testify and be able to prove that what he said wasn’t true.”
Like the Blackberry he told Congress he didn't share with Clinton but wrote to Maxwell saying he did.
To bring charges of lying to Congress against Band, someone would have to testify his statement about the phone during the testimony was false and he knew it to be false when he said it, Lage said.
The burden of proof would be lower in a civil trial, he added.
“It’s a significantly more relaxed standard,” he said. “The difference is because in one case, a person’s liberty is at stake, and in the other matter, a person is being exposed to money judgement.”
The biggest hurdle apart from proving criminality is the statute of limitations on criminal wrongdoing in these cases. Any adults abused by Epstein or his co-conspirators have passed the statute of limitations, Lage said.
Vinoo Varghese, a white collar and criminal defense lawyer in New York City, said it’s unlikely anything will come from Band’s testimony before Congress or the documents uncovered in the Epstein files.
“I think a whole bunch of these Congressional hearings were trying to uncover dirt and try to see if there's anything that could potentially tie all these people that were on the flights to Epstein Island into any sort of criminality, and nothing's coming,” he said. “In my view… it's much ado about nothing.”
Lying before Congress is the most likely charge Band could receive, he said, if it’s somehow proven Band and Maxwell had a romantic relationship. However, even that is very unlikely.
“Hypothetically, if they were somehow demonstrated [that] there was a video of the two of them having sex or something along those lines or she came out and said that ‘No, we were actually in a sexual relationship,’ you could potentially see a charge for lying to Congress,” he said.
Reactions, or lack thereof
When Band’s initial connections to Epstein and Maxwell were revealed in January and February, UF said the documents didn’t warrant any action and declined to comment a second time.
UF College Democrats President Harper Miller said UF made the wrong choice, adding that the university’s response both times was disappointing.
“The decision to essentially push this under the rug is disrespectful and hurtful to sexual assault victims at UF and in the Gainesville community, and it sets a dangerous precedent in the future, if we as a university are deciding to take an individual’s claims of innocence at face value,” she said.
Miller said she hopes the university launches an independent investigation given the responses of other universities in similar situations.
In an email to The Alligator Sept. 23, UF spokesperson Blake Trauschke declined to comment.
When the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discovered Epstein made a series of donations to the university from 2002 to 2017, it launched an independent investigation into who facilitated the donations and whether they knew about them after his conviction.
Following the findings, the director of the MIT Media Lab, who was found to have known about the donations, resigned and MIT leadership revised its donation acceptance guidelines. The university went on to donate every dollar Epstein gave to the university to four nonprofit organizations serving sexual assault victims.
Contact Alexa Ryan at aryan@alligator.org. Follow her on X @AlexaRyan_.
Alexa is a junior journalism and international studies student and The Alligator's Fall 2026 Enterprise editor. She previously served as the criminal justice reporter and the Enterprise politics reporter. In her free time, she enjoys running, traveling and going on random side quests.
