Former President Bill Clinton denied wrongdoing in his relationship with accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein as House Republicans grilled him on Feb. 27 about the late financier’s fundraising, numerous visits to the White House and pictures in Justice Department files.
Clinton, the first former president forced to testify before Congress, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in his opening statement that he “had no idea of the crimes Epstein was committing.” He dismissed the 20-year-old pictures from the department’s files and Epstein’s estate.
“I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong,” Clinton said. “As someone who grew up in a home with domestic abuse, not only would I not have flown on his plane if I had any inkling of what he was doing – I would have turned him in myself and led the call for justice for his crimes, not sweetheart deals.”
Upon exiting the session, Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Kentucky, said questioning the former president was “very productive” while declining to elaborate.
“You’ll see the video. … Everybody knows President Clinton. He’s got Southern people skills; he’s a charming individual,” the congressman said. “We picked up new facts; we asked the Clintons where we should go from here.”
The former president’s deposition at the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center, near the Clintons’ home in suburban New York, comes just a day after his wife and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified. The former first lady, who was also subpoenaed, told the committee on Feb. 26 she didn’t know Epstein and never flew on his plane. She called her deposition “repetitive” and a “fishing expedition.”
Video of the depositions will be released “within the next 24 hours,” Comer suggested.
GOP committee members said they have questions for the former first couple because Epstein visited the White House 17 times while Bill Clinton was president and then Clinton traveled 27 times on his private plane after leaving office. Clinton also appeared in a number of pictures released in the Epstein files with celebrities or in more casual surroundings with the faces of women redacted.
Comer said documents from the Justice Department and Epstein’s estate portray the late financier as raising money for the Clinton Global Initiative, a foundation seeking action on issues such as the climate and health care. Hillary Clinton told the committee Feb. 26 to ask her husband about it because she was a senator during the period in question.
“This is a historical day for the United States Congress,” Comer said. “Nobody is accusing anyone of any wrongdoing. But I think the American people have a lot of questions.”
The inquiry comes as lawmakers and women who accused Epstein of abuse have forced the Justice Department to released 3 million pages of documents about his criminal investigation. But millions more pages remain sealed, and President Donald Trump has said the country should move on.
Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges of child sex trafficking. His associate Ghislaine Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison term for conspiring to transport minors for illicit sex. Critics of the investigation have questioned why more coconspirators haven’t been charged. (USAToday)
English