Hillary Clinton delivered a withering rebuke to a congressional committee investigating her supposed links to Jeffrey Epstein on Thursday, accusing its Republican members of embarking on a “fishing expedition” intended to cover up and deflect attention from the actions of Donald Trump.
In a furious opening statement at the start of her testimony to the House of Representatives’ oversight committee, the former secretary of state suggested the event was “partisan political theatre” and “an insult to the American people” while repeating her insistence that she had never met Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex trafficker who died in 2019.
“You have compelled me to testify, fully aware that I have no knowledge that would assist your investigation, in order to distract attention from President Trump’s actions and to cover them up despite legitimate calls for answers,” she said, according to remarks she shared during the closed-door testimony.
Clinton’s onslaught came on the first day of a session that will also included a deposition on Friday by her husband, Bill Clinton, the former US president. The hearing is being staged at an arts center near the couple’s home in Chappaqua in upstate New York.
The Clintons agreed to appear reluctantly in response to a subpoena from the committee’s Republican chair, James Comer, after being threatened with contempt of Congress charges.
In her opening statement, Clinton excoriated the proceedings as “designed to protect one political party and one public official, rather than to seek truth and justice for the victims and survivors”.
Referencing her own career campaigning against sex trafficking, she added: “If this committee is serious about learning the truth about Epstein’s trafficking crimes, it would not rely on press gaggles to get answers from our current president on his involvement; it would ask him directly under oath about the tens of thousands of times he shows up in the Epstein files.
“If the majority was serious, it would not waste time on fishing expeditions. There is too much that needs to be done. What is being held back? Who is being protected? And why the cover-up?”
The hearing was momentarily suspended at the request of Clinton’s legal team after a photo of her giving testimony was shared on social media. It was later reported that the picture, posted by the Maga influencer Benny Johnson, had been taken by Lauren Boebert, one of the committee’s Republican members. It is against the rules for witnesses or lawmakers to take pictures during closed-door congressional hearings.
Both Clintons have previously complained that they are being singled out unfairly to distract public attention from Trump, who had a long friendship with Epstein before breaking with him. They wanted the testimony to be given in public, rather than released in later in video and accompanying transcripts, as is planned.
Bill Clinton is scheduled to give testimony under identical circumstances on Friday, as representatives investigate links with the late financier and pedophile that he has acknowledged and which are confirmed in Epstein files released by the justice department under congressional mandate.
Committee members have travelled to Chappaqua for the proceedings after it was agreed that the Clintons would not have to testify on Capitol Hill. Written transcripts and video footage from the depositions are expected to be released in the coming days.
Addressing journalists outside the Chappaqua arts center, where the Clinton hearings are being staged, Republicans and Democrats vied for control of the narrative surrounding the files.
Comer accused them of trying to avoid a subpoena when other public figures – including Bill Barr and Alex Acosta, members of the first Trump administration – had appeared willingly.
“The Clintons haven’t answered very many, if any, questions about their knowledge or involvement with Epstein and [Ghislaine] Maxwell [Epstein’s former partner and convicted co-conspirator],” Comer said. “Again, no one is accusing at this moment the Clintons of any wrongdoing, they’re going to have due process. But we have a lot of questions, and the purpose of the whole investigation is to try to understand many things about Epstein.”
Robert Garcia, the committee’s ranking Democrat, told reporters that he supported Bill Clinton being asked to address the committee but said Democrats would now demand that Trump testify following disclosures that files by a woman alleging that he had sexually assaulted her when she was a minor had been excluded from the documents released.
“Now that we’re going to hear from former president Clinton, I hope that Chairman Comer and the Republicans will join us in demanding that the person who actually appears more times in the files than the former president who we want to speak with is President Donald Trump,” he said. “Let’s get President Trump in front of our committee to answer the questions that are being asked across this country, from survivors, from those have been brutally attacked and raped, sometimes as children.”
Hillary Clinton’s summons in particular has prompted accusations that the depositions are a partisan exercise intended to deflect scrutiny of Trump’s long association with Epstein.
James Walkinshaw, a Virginia Democrat on the committee, said: “There is no indication – zero, zip, zilch, nada – that Secretary Clinton had any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes. My fear is we’re here today as part of a political exercise, part of a long running fever dream where Republicans want to lock up Secretary Clinton.”
In contrast to her husband, Hillary Clinton, a former senator for New York, has denied having ever met Epstein, although she has acknowledged meeting Maxwell several times.
“The big tell in the partisan intent behind this event is that they have subpoenaed and threatened with criminal contempt Hillary Clinton, who has nothing to offer, who has never met Jeffrey Epstein or communicated with him,” said Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime confidant of the Clintons and Guardian columnist.
“She knows absolutely nothing. So the fact that you would do that to her and bind her into this shows exactly what their motive is.”
Both Clintons have deep experience in facing Republican-led inquisitions and have often emerged in politically stronger positions.
Hillary Clinton testified for nine hours in 2015 to a House select committee investigating a deadly terrorist attack on a US diplomatic mission in Libya that killed the US ambassador and three other Americans while she was secretary of state. Her appearance was widely deemed to have neutralized Republican attacks and boosted her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Blumenthal, who also testified under subpoena to the 2015 panel, predicted that she would emerge unscathed from the latest hearings.
“Hillary faced Trey Gowdy [a former Republican representative and the select committee chair] who, at the end of the day, looked ridiculous,” he said. “Trey Gowdy is an intellectual giant compared to James Comer.”
Bill Clinton provided two sworn testimonies in 1998 resulting from a Republican-driven independent counsel investigation.
One related to sexual harassment allegations brought by Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee. He also gave grand jury testimony over allegations that his testimony in the previous hearing about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern, amounted to perjury and obstruction of justice.
The former president has denied any wrongdoing and has called for all files relating to Epstein to be released. Around 3m documents are believed to be still in the Justice Department’s possession, in violation of the terms of Epstein Transparency Act.
Clinton acknowledges flying four times on Epstein’s private plan, nicknamed “the Lolita Express”, and appears in several photographs in the files, including one showing him and Epstein in a hot tub with a woman whose identity is redacted.
He says he cuts ties with Epstein in 2006 as the financier’s sexual crimes became known.
Hillary Clinton has accused the Trump administration of engaging in an “ongoing coverup” of the files.
