Hillary

Feb. 26 (UPI) — Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she has “no knowledge” that would assist the House Oversight Committee in its investigation involving late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in her opening statement before the panel Thursday.

Clinton posted the prepared statement on her social media account ahead of the closed-door deposition.

She said the committee didn’t ask President Donald Trump under oath about his appearances in the Epstein files or demand information from Florida or New York prosecutors about the plea deal Epstein made in 2008 that allowed him to avoid federal sex trafficking charges.

“Instead, you have compelled me to testify, fully aware that I have no knowledge that would assist your investigation, in order to distract attention from President Trump’s actions and to cover them up despite legitimate calls for answers,” Clinton said, according to the statement she posted on X.

“This institutional failure is designed to protect one political party and one public official, rather than to seek truth and justice for the victims and survivors, as well as the public who also want to get to the bottom of this matter,” Clinton said. “My heart breaks for the survivors. And I am furious on their behalf.”

Clinton gave a sworn declaration to the Oversight Committee on Jan. 13 in which she said she had no knowledge of crimes committed by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, his convicted accomplice, and said she did not remember ever meeting Epstein.

The testimony Thursday at the Chappaqua, N.Y., Performing Arts Center, was interrupted during the first hour after right-wing influencer Benny Johnson shared an image on X from the closed-door proceedings.

“This is the first time Hillary has had to answer real questions about [Jeffrey] Epstein,” Johnson wrote on the post with the photo, which he attributed to Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo. “Clinton does not look happy.”

Nick Merrill, a Clinton adviser, told reporters that the post caused the testimony to go off the record, “while they figure out where the photo came from and why possibly members of Congress are violating House rules,” Politico reported.

Before the testimony began, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., gave a press conference outside of the venue.

“No one’s accusing, at this moment, the Clintons of any wrongdoing. They’re going to have due process,” The Hill reported Comer said

“But we have a lot of questions,” Comer said. “And the purpose of the whole investigation is to try to understand many things about Epstein. How did he accumulate so much wealth? How was he able to surround himself with some of the most powerful men in the world? Was he an asset for our government or any other government?”

Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, initially said they would testify in a public hearing, but committee chair Comer said the committee’s practice is to do interviews behind closed doors first, then hold hearings.

The House of Representatives was close to holding a bipartisan vote to hold them in contempt for ignoring a subpoena when the Clintons relented and agreed to be questioned in private.

Bill Clinton’s deposition is scheduled for Friday. Neither Clinton has been accused of any crimes, and both have called for the full release of the Epstein files.

At least 10 Republican members and nine Democrats were expected to attend the event, which was in the town where the Clintons now live, CBS News reported.

Clinton has said that she and her husband have little information to offer the committee.

“Other witnesses were asked to testify. They gave written statements under oath. We offered that,” she told the BBC last week. “Why do they want to pull us into this? To divert attention from President [Donald] Trump. This is not complicated.”

There are undated photos of Bill Clinton in the Epstein files with Epstein, who died by suicide in prison in 2019.

Bill Clinton’s spokesperson, Angel Ureña, has said he flew on Epstein’s plane four times in 2002 and 2003. The flights were for trips for the Clinton Foundation.

Hillary Clinton has said she doesn’t believe she ever met Epstein, but she was familiar with Maxwell. Maxwell is serving 20 years in prison for her sex trafficking conviction.

Maxwell told Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche last year that, “President Clinton was my friend, not Epstein’s friend,” NBC News reported. She said she offered the plane to the former president. She also said that Bill Clinton was a close friend of billionaire Ted Waitt, founder of Gateway computers, whom she dated from 2003 to 2010. Maxwell and Waitt attended Chelsea Clinton’s wedding in 2010.

WASHINGTON — Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told U.S. House lawmakers on Thursday that she had no knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s or Ghislaine Maxwell’s crimes at the start of two days of depositions that will also include former President Clinton.

“I had no idea about their criminal activities. I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein,” Hillary Clinton said in an opening statement she shared on social media.

The closed-door depositions in the Clintons’ hometown of Chappaqua, a typically quiet hamlet north of New York City, come after months of tense back-and-forth between the former high-powered Democratic couple and the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee. It will be the first time that a former president has been forced to testify before Congress.

Yet the demand for a reckoning over Epstein’s abuse of underage girls has become a near-unstoppable force on Capitol Hill and beyond.

President Trump, a Republican who has expressed regret that the Clintons are being forced to testify, bowed last year to pressure to release case files on Epstein, who killed himself in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial. The Clintons, too, agreed to testify after their offers of sworn statements were rebuffed by the Oversight panel and its chairman, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., threatened criminal contempt of Congress charges against them.

“We have a very clear record that we’ve been willing to talk about,” Hillary Clinton said in an interview with the BBC earlier this month. She added that her husband had flown with Epstein for charitable trips and that she did not recall meeting Epstein but had interacted with Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend and confidant, at conferences hosted by the Clinton Foundation.

Maxwell, a British socialite, also attended the 2010 wedding of their daughter, Chelsea Clinton.

“We are more than happy to say what we know, which is very limited and totally unrelated to their behavior or their crimes, and we want to do it in public,” Hillary Clinton said.

Bill Clinton, however, has emerged as a top target for Republicans amid the political struggle over who receives the most scrutiny for their ties to Epstein. Several photos of the former president were included in the first tranche of Epstein files released by the Department of Justice in January, including a number of him with women whose faces were redacted. Clinton has not been accused of wrongdoing in his relationship with Epstein.

Comer has also pointed to Hillary Clinton’s work as secretary of state to address sex trafficking as another reason to insist on her deposition. The committee’s investigation has sought to understand why the Department of Justice under previous presidential administrations did not seek further charges against Epstein following a 2008 arrangement in which he pleaded guilty to state charges in Florida for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl but avoided federal charges.

Yet conspiracy theories, especially on the right, have swirled for years around the Clintons and their connections to Epstein and Maxwell, who argues she was wrongfully convicted. Republicans have long wanted to press the Clintons for answers.

“I mean if you’re the wife of Bill Clinton, aren’t you going to have some questions about your husband’s activities?” said Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., a member of the House Oversight Committee. “We only go where the facts take us. We didn’t put the president and the secretary in this position. They put themselves in it.”

Democrats, now being led by a new generation of politicians, have prioritized transparency around Epstein over defending the former leaders of their party. Several Democratic lawmakers joined with Republicans on the Oversight panel to advance the contempt of Congress charges against the Clintons last month. Several said they had no relationship with the Clintons and owed no loyalty to them.

Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the Oversight panel, said that both Republican and Democratic administrations “have failed survivors in not getting more information out to the public.” He also said he wanted to ask about Epstein’s possible ties to foreign governments.

Democrats are also coming off an effort this week to confront Trump about his administration’s handling of the Epstein files by taking women who survived Epstein’s abuse as their guests to Trump’s State of the Union address. Even senior Democrats, such as former Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, said it was appropriate for the committee to interview anyone, including the former president, who was connected to Epstein.

“We want to hear from everyone,” Pelosi said, adding that she did not see why Hillary Clinton was being interviewed and that it was important to “believe survivors.”

Groves writes for the Associated Press.