Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly stated during an interrogation of about seven hours behind closed doors before a House of Representatives investigative committee that she had never met sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and knew nothing about his crimes. She said this to the media after the interrogation.
According to Clinton, her husband, former President Bill Clinton, will also testify to the same committee on Friday that he was unaware of the crimes of Epstein, who died in a New York cell in 2019 after his arrest on suspicion of human trafficking of underage girls. The former president did maintain ties with Epstein and appears in the so-called ‘Epstein files’, documents related to the investigation into the sex offender that the US department has partially made public on behalf of Congress.
Bill Clinton will be questioned about this this Friday, also behind closed doors. He has not been charged with a crime. Both Clintons refused to testify for months because they said their subpoena was motivated by party politics. They agreed after the committee threatened to prosecute them for contempt of Congress.
The Clintons insisted on public questioning out of fear that their testimonies would be distorted; instead, transcripts and video recordings of the hearings will be released — the aim is to do so within 24 hours, according to James Comer, the committee’s Republican chairman.
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“I answered each of their questions as completely as I could, based on what I knew,” Clinton said outside a theater in Chappaqua, the Clintons’ hometown in upstate New York, where the hearing was held. “And what I knew is what I said in my statement this morning: I never met Jeffrey Epstein, never had any connection or communication with him.”
She was asked about that “literally over and over again,” Clinton said. “I don’t know how many times I have had to say that I did not know Jeffrey Epstein. I have never been to his island, I have never been to his houses, I have never been to his offices. So it has been officially recorded countless times.”
About her husband, she said that “the connection he had with Epstein ended several years before anything came to light about Epstein’s criminal activities and he was indicted.”
At the start of the hearing, Clinton published her opening statement on social media. In it she wrote that she had no information about the crimes of Epstein and his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell. Clinton also argued that the subpoena of her and her husband is a diversionary maneuver by the Republican-dominated committee to divert attention from the role of President Donald Trump and his administration in the Epstein scandal and controversial omissions in the disclosure of the documents.
Fierce suspicions
Clinton’s questioning was interrupted after Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert sent a photo of Clinton to a conservative influencer during the closed session. He posted that photo on social media. This was against the rules of the committee.
The interrogation was familiar territory for Clinton: she has been bombarded with fierce accusations by Republicans over the years, including about her role as Secretary of State surrounding the attack on American diplomats in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 and about her use of a private server for email traffic in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, which she lost to Trump as a Democratic candidate.
During Thursday’s hearing, she was asked by one of the Republican committee members about “pizzagate,” she said afterwards — a debunked conspiracy theory about a pedophile ring allegedly run from the basement of a Washington pizzeria. She also received questions about UFOs, she said.
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US House hears Clintons about Epstein: Bill will have to defend himself, Hillary can choose the attack
