CHAPPAQUA, New York — Hillary Clinton derided her appearance before the House Oversight Committee as “political theater” as she began testifying behind closed doors in front of the Republican-led panel Thursday as part of its investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
In an opening statement that Clinton distributed on social media, she said she did not have any information about Epstein’s crimes. She said she did not recall ever encountering the disgraced financier and that she never flew on his plane nor visited his island, homes or offices. Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, is expected to be deposed by the committee on Friday.
The panel has issued subpoenas to several people whose names appear in the Justice Department’s release of millions of records related to the federal government’s investigation of Epstein and his crimes. But it has largely focused on Democrats. House Republican lawmakers on Thursday promised to deliver hourly updates on what they said would be lengthy testimony from Hillary Clinton.
“Too often congressional investigations are partisan political theater, which is an abdication of duty and an insult to the American people,” Clinton said in her opening statement Thursday.
Addressing Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R-Kentucky) directly, Clinton added: “You have made little effort to call the people who show up most prominently in the Epstein files. And when you did, not a single Republican member showed up for Les Wexner’s deposition.”
Wexner, the billionaire behind large brands such as Victoria’s Secret, testified last week. A longtime Epstein associate, he has donated mostly to GOP candidates and causes. Republican members of the committee all skipped his testimony.
Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to two charges of soliciting prostitution, including one involving a minor. He was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019 and died in federal custody later that year. His death was ruled a suicide. Judges and lawmakers say that over decades, he abused, trafficked and molested scores of girls, many of whom have come forward in court and in other public forums.
The Clintons initially resisted complying with the committee’s subpoenas, which they called invalid and legally unenforceable, but capitulated days before the House was expected to hold them in criminal contempt of Congress.
The Clintons asked to be allowed to testify in public. The committee declined, opting instead for a closed-door proceeding.
In Chappaqua, the suburban New York town the Clintons have long called home, House Oversight committee members are questioning the former secretary of state and former Democratic presidential candidate inside the local performing arts center.
“We’re not accusing Hillary Clinton of wrongdoing,” Comer told a large contingent of national press that converged here.
“We know that Jeffrey Epstein said many times in emails that he was the first person to raise money for” various Clinton post-presidency initiatives, Comer said ahead of the deposition. “Again, that’s not saying anything illegal, but there are a lot of questions pertaining to Secretary Clinton.”
Comer said that in keeping with committee practice, a transcript and video of Clinton’s testimony would later be released. He did not specify when.
Maxwell took credit for having been “very central” to the establishment of the Clinton Global Initiative, an annual philanthropic gathering sponsored by the Clinton Foundation that began in 2005.
The Clinton Foundation has said it received only one donation — for $25,000 — from an Epstein-affiliated foundation, in 2006.
Democrats have said they want a serious bipartisan investigation into Epstein’s crimes and defended Clinton.
“There is no indication, zero, zip, zilch, nada, that Secretary Clinton had any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes,” said Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Virginia). “My fear is that we’re here today as part of a political exercise, part of a long-running fever dream where republicans want to lock up Secretary Clinton.”
This is not Hillary Clinton’s first experience being grilled by a Republican-led investigative panel.
In 2015, she spent 11 hours testifying before a select committee probing attacks that had occurred three years before on an installation in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans were killed.
Hillary Clinton, who had been secretary of secretary when the attack occurred, remained calm throughout and provided few new details. Nor were Republicans able to pin her with personal responsibility for security lapses that contributed to deaths that included that of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
During her husband’s presidency, Hillary Clinton also became the first wife of a sitting president to appear under subpoena before a grand jury. She was questioned for four hours regarding issues related to a failed Arkansas real estate venture known as Whitewater, in which the couple had invested while Bill Clinton was governor. Neither Clinton was prosecuted.
Comer told reporters he expects the committee’s questioning of Bill Clinton on Friday will be lengthier than that of Hillary Clinton.
Bill Clinton has denied any wrongdoing in connection to Epstein and said that he had no knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activities.
Bill Clinton took about half a dozen trips on Epstein’s private jet in 2002 and 2003, and he is referred to tens of thousands of times in the trove of Epstein-related documents the Justice Department has released. None include direct correspondence between the two or rebut claims by the former president’s aides that he severed ties with Epstein years before his 2019 federal indictment.
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