Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a congressional committee yesterday that she did not remember ever meeting the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and had no information to share about his criminal activities.
“I do not recall ever encountering Epstein. I never flew on his plane or visited his island, homes or offices. I have nothing to add to that,” Clinton said in a statement, which she released as she delivered a closed-door deposition to the House of Representatives Oversight Committee in Chappaqua, New York.
Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, also accused the Republican-led panel of trying to shift focus away from President Donald Trump’s ties to Epstein, who died by suicide in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.
She said Trump’s administration has “gutted” a State Department office focused on international sex trafficking. The hearing was paused briefly after a photo of Clinton seated at a table was leaked to social media, in a violation of committee rules, according to Clinton adviser Nick Merrill. Conservative influencer Benny Johnson, who published the photo, said it was taken by Republican Representative Lauren Boebert.
She and her husband, Democratic former President Bill Clinton, initially refused to testify before the committee, but relented when legislators moved to hold them in contempt of Congress. Bill Clinton is scheduled to testify to the committee today.
Before the hearing, Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer of Kentucky, a Republican, denied that the probe was a partisan effort, noting that several Democrats had pushed for the Clintons to testify. “No one is accusing at this moment the Clintons of any wrongdoing but we do have a lot of questions,” Comer said.
He said the committee would seek to find out about any interactions she might have had with Epstein, his involvement with the Clintons’ charitable work, and any relationship she may have had with jailed Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
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