Former President Bill Clinton denied knowing about the crimes of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, in his statement for a deposition before a House investigative committee.
“As someone who grew up in a home with domestic abuse, not only would I not have flown on his plane if I had any inkling of what he was doing—I would have turned him in myself and led the call for justice for his crimes, not sweetheart deals,” Clinton said of Epstein in his opening statement, posted on social media.
Bill Clinton is the first former president compelled to testify before Congress, as the oversight committee investigated Epstein’s connections to influential people and the Justice Department’s past handling of his investigation and prosecution.
A day earlier, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly told House investigators she knew nothing about Epstein, who died in a New York prison in 2019 in what was determined a suicide. She told the committee members to ask the former president.
On Friday morning, House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., planned to take her advice.
“Ms. Clinton deferred a lot of questions to her husband today,” Comer said. “There were at least a dozen times when she said, you’ll have to ask my husband that. I can’t answer that. So, we already had a big portfolio of questions for him, and that increased yesterday.”
The committee traveled to Chappaqua, New York, near the Clinton home, for the closed-door deposition.
While the former secretary of state denied ever meeting Epstein, the 42nd president was once photographed in a swimming pool at Epstein’s estate, appearing with both Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of helping him perpetrate crimes, and another woman whose face was blocked out. The photo was published in a batch of Epstein files released by the Justice Department in December.
Meanwhile, Comer has noted that Bill Clinton was on Epstein’s plane two dozen times, and that Epstein visited the Clinton White House more than a dozen times.
Both depositions are the culmination of a monthslong process that began when a House Oversight federal law enforcement subcommittee—in a bipartisan vote—subpoenaed 10 individuals, including the Clintons, to testify on what they knew about Epstein.
The Clintons were initially scheduled for depositions in October but declined. They also declined dates in December and January.
In late January, nine Democrats joined 25 Republicans on the full House Oversight Committee to advance a contempt of Congress charge against Bill Clinton for failing to appear at his scheduled deposition earlier that month. Only three Democrats voted to hold Hillary Clinton in contempt for failing to appear at her scheduled deposition in January.
Then, ahead of a vote by the full House on the contempt of Congress charges, the Clintons agreed to a deposition to stave off the vote.
Maxwell’s lawyer, David Oscar Markus, who is seeking clemency for his client in exchange for her testimony, recently told the committee that “both President Trump and President Clinton are innocent of any wrongdoing.”
