Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Photo / AFP
Hillary Clinton has used her forced appearance before a Republican-led panel probing Jeffrey Epstein to go on the offensive by demanding US President Donald Trump testify about his own links to the sex offender.
Clinton said after her deposition when asked if she was confident that her husband did not know of Epstein’s crimes, Clinton said “I am”.
“I don’t know how many times I had to say I did not know Jeffrey Epstein,” she added.
“I never went to his island, I never went to his homes, I never went to his offices,” she said after earlier accusing the panel of trying to “protect one public official” – Trump.
James Comer, who chairs the committee that will also grill former President Bill Clinton this week, said “the purpose of the whole investigation is to try to understand many things about Epstein” – the deceased convicted sex offender.
“There were a lot of questions that we asked that we weren’t satisfied with the answers that we that we got,” he added after the deposition concluded.
Clinton earlier challenged the panel to question Trump about the tens of thousands of times he shows up in the Epstein files.
While her deposition was behind closed doors, Clinton posted her opening statement on social media, with the transcript expected to be published upon approval by her lawyers. A video will follow within 24 hours, Comer said.
Democratic committee member Suhas Subramanyam said that “missing FBI files” omitted from the Epstein documents disclosures contain “serious accusations around sexual abuse” against Trump.
The Republican-led House Oversight Committee is probing those who were linked to Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial.
The Clintons had initially rejected subpoenas ordering them to testify in the panel’s probe, but the Democratic power couple agreed to do so after House Republicans threatened to hold them in contempt of Congress.
The hearing was dramatically paused for a brief time after a photo of Clinton in the deposition was posted online – an apparent breach of the closed-door arrangement.
“We had agreed upon rules based on the fact it was going to be a closed hearing at their demand, and one of the members violated that rule, which was very upsetting,” Clinton said.
Democrats say the investigation is being weaponised to attack political opponents of Trump rather than to conduct legitimate oversight.
Trump and Bill Clinton, both 79, feature prominently in the recently released trove of government documents related to Epstein, but said they broke any ties with the financier before his 2008 conviction in Florida as a sex offender.
Mere mention in the files is not proof of having committed a crime.
The Clintons called for their depositions to be public but the committee insisted on questioning them behind closed doors, a move Bill Clinton denounced as akin to a “kangaroo court”.
The depositions are being held in Chappaqua, New York, where the Clintons reside.
Dozens of journalists have converged on the wealthy hamlet and the Secret Service erected metal barricades around the arts centre where the deposition is happening.
Bill Clinton has acknowledged flying on Epstein’s plane several times in the early 2000s for Clinton Foundation-related humanitarian work, but said he never visited Epstein’s private Caribbean island.
Comer said at the conclusion of Hillary’s appearance that “we have a lot of questions for her husband tomorrow”.
Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, 64, is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking.
She appeared via video-link before the House Oversight Committee earlier this month but refused to answer questions, invoking her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself.
Epstein cultivated a network of powerful business executives, politicians, celebrities and academics.
- Agence France-Presse