(AFP) – A US congressional committee investigating convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein released videos on Monday of the depositions of Bill and Hillary Clinton. The former US president and former US secretary of state appeared before the House Oversight Committee last week to testify about their relations with Epstein.
Hillary Clinton told the panel that she did not know Epstein, and Bill Clinton said he broke ties with him before the financier’s sex crimes came to light in 2008. In statements to the committee, Bill Clinton said he had done “nothing wrong” and Hillary Clinton called for the panel to depose President Donald Trump, once a close friend of Epstein. The lawmakers should ask Trump “directly under oath about the tens of thousands of times he shows up in the Epstein files,” she said.
Being mentioned in the Epstein files released by the Department of Justice does not imply wrongdoing, and Bill Clinton — like Trump — has not been formally accused of a crime. Bill Clinton has acknowledged extensive interactions with Epstein but said he never visited his infamous private Caribbean island where the financier allegedly trafficked young women and girls to powerful business and political figures. Bill Clinton has acknowledged flying on Epstein’s private plane several times in the early 2000s for Clinton Foundation-related humanitarian work.
Epstein was convicted in 2008 of soliciting sex from girls as young as 14, but died in a New York jail cell in 2019 before he could be tried on sex trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide but, like much else around Epstein, is the subject of lurid conspiracy theories. The Clintons had initially rejected subpoenas ordering them to testify, but the Democratic power couple agreed to do so after House Republicans threatened to hold them in contempt of Congress.
Democrats say the investigation is being weaponized to attack Trump’s political opponents rather than to conduct legitimate oversight. The closed-door depositions were held last week in Chappaqua, New York, where the Clintons reside.
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