CHAPPAQUA, N.Y. — Bill Clinton sought to distance himself from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein at the outset of what is expected to be an hours-long, contentious closed-door deposition here Friday, saying he had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and stopped associating with him years before his first guilty plea.
“I had no idea of the crimes Epstein was committing. No matter how many photos you show me, I have two things that at the end of the day matter more than your interpretation of those 20-year-old photos,” Clinton said in his opening statement. “I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong.”
Clinton added: “But even with 20/20 hindsight, I saw nothing that ever gave me pause. We are only here because he hid it from everyone so well for so long.”
Clinton’s appearance before the House Oversight Committee is the first time a former president has been compelled to testify before Congress under a subpoena. It has the potential to set a precedent that could one day impact President Donald Trump, whose own ties to Epstein are also under scrutiny. Trump has been uncharacteristically muted about Clinton’s appearance, saying that he did not like the attacks on Clinton despite years of political conflict between their parties.
“I don’t like seeing him deposed. But they certainly went after me more than that,” Trump said outside the White House on Friday ahead of his departure to Texas.
That has not stopped House Republicans, who have issued subpoenas to several people — largely Democrats — mentioned in the Justice Department’s release of millions of files related to the federal government’s Epstein investigation.
The Oversight Committee deposed former secretary of state and onetime Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for hours on Thursday. The panel plans to release video as early as Friday.
Bill Clinton also blasted the committee for forcing his wife to testify when she has no known association with Epstein. Hillary Clinton said Thursday that she had known Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell only “casually as an acquaintance.”
“Before we start, I have to get personal. You made Hillary come in. She had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. Nothing,” Bill Clinton said in his opening statement. “Whether you subpoenaed 10 people or 10,000, including her was simply not right.”
Bill Clinton is being deposed at the same venue as his wife, a performing arts center in Chappaqua, New York — a suburban town they have long called home. Hillary Clinton told committee members Thursday that her husband’s relationship with Epstein ended “several years before anything about Epstein’s criminal activities came to light.”
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Kentucky) told reporters Friday that his committee would “continue to bring some of the most powerful people in the world and to answer questions.”
“Again, no one’s accusing anyone of any wrongdoing, but I think the American people have a lot of questions. And our House Oversight Committee is committed to getting answers,” he said.
The former president has denied any wrongdoing in connection to Epstein and said that he had no knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activities. He took about half a dozen trips on Epstein’s private jet in 2002 and 2003. He has also appeared in Epstein-related photographs released by Congress and the Justice Department, including one in which he is in a bubbling pool with a woman whose face is redacted.
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.
Clinton is referred to tens of thousands of times in the trove of Epstein-related documents the Justice Department has released. None of those mentions in the documents 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.
Comer told reporters on Thursday that Republicans on the panel planned to ask the Clintons how Epstein accumulated his wealth, how he “was he able to surround himself with some of the most powerful men in the world” and whether the financier “was he an asset for our government or any other government.”
Democrats on the committee repeatedly claimed Friday that Bill Clinton’s appearance set a new precedent of bringing presidents and former presidents to testify.
“We are now asking and demanding that President Trump officially come in and testify in front of the Oversight Committee,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (California), the top-ranking Democrat on the committee.
Trump had a long-standing friendship with Epstein. He has said that he knew Epstein socially in Palm Beach, Florida, and that they had a falling out in the mid-2000s. Trump has maintained that he did not know about Epstein’s criminal behavior.
Members from both parties on Friday also signaled that they could have enough support to subpoena Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to appear before the committee.
Lutnick, who was once Epstein’s Manhattan neighbor, is facing growing scrutiny over the connection to the deceased financier. Testifying before Congress earlier this month, Lutnick said that he and his family had lunch with Epstein on his Caribbean island in 2012 — after having previously claimed that he and his wife had distanced themselves from Epstein around 2005.
Hillary Clinton said Thursday that Republicans’ line of questioning went beyond its mandate, telling reporters that while she was under oath lawmakers asked her about UFOs and the baseless theory that a child sex-trafficking ring involving high-ranking Democrats was operating out of a Washington pizza restaurant.
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. They then asked to be allowed to testify in public. The committee declined, opting instead for closed-door proceedings.
Hillary Clinton blasted her appearance Thursday before the committee as “political theater” and sharply questioned why the Republican-led panel insisted upon deposing her as part of its investigation.
“I don’t know how many times I had to say I did not know Jeffrey Epstein,” Clinton told reporters after hours of closed-door testimony here. “I never went to his island. I never went to his homes. I never went to his offices.”
Comer on Friday maintained that Republicans sought to ask about “every item of evidence that would suggest Hillary Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein had a close relationship.”
Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell has taken 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.
There have already been consequences for at least one individual in Clinton’s administration connected to Epstein: former Treasury secretary Larry Summers. A Harvard University spokesman said this week that Summers would resign from his academic and faculty appointments at the end of this academic year after extensive correspondence between Summers and Epstein emerged in the files. Summers said last fall that he was “deeply ashamed” of his actions and the pain they had caused.
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