Several days after leaked emails showed Mark Epstein – the brother of the late child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein – saying that Donald Trump performed oral sex on a man named “Bubba,” Mark Epstein is clarifying that he was not referring to former president Bill Clinton.

“They were simply part of a humorous private exchange between two brothers and were never meant for public release or to be interpreted as serious remarks,” he said in a statement to Advocate. “For the avoidance of doubt, the reference to ‘Bubba’ in this correspondence is not, in any way, a reference to former President Bill Clinton.”

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A spokesperson for Mark Epstein further said that Bubba is “a private individual who is not a public figure.”

“Mark has asked me to convey that the press release will be his final statement on this matter,” the spokesperson said.

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The House Oversight Committee released thousands of emails from the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, and speculation ran wild on Friday about an email exchange between Mark and Jeffrey Epstein.

“Bannon with me,” Jeffrey Epstein wrote in one email from March 2018, referring to White House advisor Steve Bannon.

“Ask him if [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has the photos of Trump blowing Bubba?” Mark Epstein replied.

“And I thought I had tsuris,” Jeffrey Epstein replied, using the Yiddish word for “troubles.”

The exchange was widely shared, with many speculating that “Bubba” referred to Clinton, who was referred to as “Bubba” several other times in the email dump.

“Bubba” has long been a nickname for the former president, but the term “Bubba” is often used in jokes about male-male prison rape that straight people tell each other. This message board thread from 2015, for example, involves people asking why the name “Bubba” is so often used in prison rape jokes.

But Mark Epstein’s spokesperson’s statement that Bubba is “a private individual who is not a public figure” suggests that he was referring to a real person. The spokesperson also told Advocate that “misinterpretations of formal language or nicknames in email correspondence” are a distraction from “the serious questions that remain unanswered.”

Jeffrey Epstein said in other emails released last week that Trump “knew about the girls” and referenced Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort but didn’t directly say that Trump participated in child sex abuse.

The White House said that the emails were “selectively leaked” in order to “create a fake narrative to smear President Trump.” The White House denies that the president was involved in Epstein’s crimes.

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