WASHINGTON — A U.S. congressional committee investigating convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has released videos of closed-door depositions of Bill and Hillary Clinton, who were questioned last week about their interactions with the late financier.
In the recordings, taken in Chappaqua, New York, the former president and former secretary of state addressed their ties to Epstein and rejected any suggestion of misconduct. Hillary Clinton told members of the House Oversight Committee that she did not know Epstein. Bill Clinton said he ended contact with Epstein before the financier’s sex crimes came to light in 2008 and maintained he had done “nothing wrong.”
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Bill Clinton acknowledged having extensive interactions with Epstein in the early 2000s and flying on Epstein’s private plane several times for work linked to the Clinton Foundation’s humanitarian efforts. He said he never visited Epstein’s private Caribbean island, where Epstein allegedly trafficked young women and girls to powerful figures.
Hillary Clinton urged the panel to depose former President Donald Trump, described in the proceedings as once a close friend of Epstein. Both Bill Clinton and Trump have been named in materials connected to the Epstein case, but being mentioned in such files does not imply wrongdoing, and neither has been formally accused of a crime related to Epstein.
The release of the deposition videos comes after the Clintons initially rejected subpoenas to testify. They agreed to sit for depositions after House Republicans threatened to hold them in contempt of Congress, according to the committee. Democrats have criticized the inquiry, arguing Republicans are weaponizing it to target Trump’s political opponents rather than pursue legitimate oversight.
Epstein was convicted in 2008 of soliciting sex from girls as young as 14. He was arrested again in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges but died in a New York jail that year before he could be tried. His death was ruled a suicide, though it remains the focus of widespread conspiracy theories.
The newly released footage offers a rare public window into the committee’s closed-door questioning of the Democratic power couple, long the subject of political attacks over their proximity to influential donors and associates. The Clintons’ testimony underscores the complicated legacy of Epstein’s reach into elite circles and the continuing political fallout well after his death.
While the Oversight Committee has not announced next steps, the depositions signal the panel’s intent to catalogue Epstein’s contacts with prominent public figures and assess whether any official actions or policy decisions were influenced by those relationships. The videos also set up potential partisan clashes over whom the committee calls next — a point of friction likely to intensify if members heed calls to summon Trump.
The committee’s probe has unfolded alongside renewed public scrutiny of records and correspondence linked to Epstein’s network. Legal experts caution that document caches and name lists, some released by the Department of Justice or in related civil litigation, often capture routine contacts and do not, on their own, substantiate criminal conduct.
For now, the Clintons’ depositions underscore a familiar divide in Washington: Republicans pressing for further inquiry into the pair’s past associations and Democrats casting the investigation as a political exercise. The videos add fresh material to a long-running controversy but stop short of establishing any new allegations against either Clinton.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
