Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told members of Congress on Thursday that she had no knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s or Ghislaine Maxwell’s crimes, starting off two days of depositions that will also include former President Bill Clinton.
Watch Clinton’s briefing with reporters after the deposition in the video player above.
“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 deposition concluded after over six hours of questioning Thursday.
The 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 as it investigates Epstein, who killed himself in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial. 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 Donald 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. 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.
“Like every decent person,” Hillary Clinton added in her opening statement, “I have been horrified by what we have learned about their crimes.”
She has previously said that her husband flew with Epstein for charitable trips but that she did not recall ever meeting Epstein. She had also interacted with Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend and confidant, at conferences hosted by the Clinton Foundation.
