Donald Trump has lashed out at Hillary Clinton after she accused the administration of a “cover-up” over its handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Speaking aboard Air Force One, Trump was pressed by reporters about his response to his 2016 election rival’s assessment that she and her husband, Bill Clinton, are being made to testify about the late pedophile to “divert attention” away from the president’s associations with Epstein.
“I have nothing to hide. I’ve been exonerated. I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. They went in hoping that they’d find it, and found just the opposite. I’ve been totally exonerated,” Trump said.
“They’re getting pulled in, and that’s their problem, but I watched her in Munich, and she seriously has Trump derangement syndrome. I’ve been totally exonerated, and it’s really interesting because they’ve been pulled in,“ he added. ”Think of it, they’ve been pulled in. Clinton and many other Democrats have been pulled in.”
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton have agreed to testify before Congress about Epstein later this month. Bill Clinton is another high-profile associate of Epstein, who died in federal custody in 2019, but he denied knowing about Epstein’s sex offenses.
The Clintons initially refused to answer questions under oath about the investigation into Epstein but agreed to do so after House Republicans threatened to hold them in contempt of Congress.
Speaking to the BBC at the annual World Forum in Berlin, Hillary Clinton suggested that the calls to have her and her husband testify about Epstein are a desperate distraction attempt.
“We have no links [with Epstein]. We have a very clear record that we’ve been willing to talk about, which my husband has said he took some rides on the airplane for his charitable work,” she said. “I don’t recall ever meeting him.”
Clinton added that she did meet Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving 20 years in prison for helping Epstein abuse women and underage girls around the world, but only among the “thousands of people” she met via her Clinton Global Initiative.
“We are more than happy to say what we know, which is very limited and totally unrelated to their behavior or their crimes.
“Why do they want to pull us into this? To divert attention from President Trump. This is not complicated,” she added. “Look at this shiny object. We’re going to have the Clintons, even Hillary Clinton, who never met the guy.”
Trump was close friends with Epstein for several years, although the pair reportedly fell out before the disgraced financier was publicly exposed as a sex offender.
Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday that Epstein “was fighting that I don’t get elected [in 2016] with some author, a sleaze bag, by the way,” an apparent reference to author and journalist Michael Wolff.
Wolff, who co-hosts the Daily Beast’s podcast Inside Trump’s Head, was in frequent email conversations with Epstein in the years before his death, pages of which were made public as part of the staggered release of the Epstein files.
Speaking to fellow Inside Trump’s Head co-host Joanna Coles in November 2025, Wolff explained that he has no regrets about messaging with Epstein.
“Jeffrey Epstein was a monster, but he had important things to say,” Wolff said, adding he felt it necessary to expose how Trump was “the best friend of, you know, evil.”
A spokesperson for the White House referred the Daily Beast back to Trump’s Monday remarks when asked for comment.
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