Former US President Bill Clinton denied any wrongdoing Friday during a closed-door deposition before a congressional panel investigating his links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, insisting he broke ties with the disgraced financier well before Epstein’s 2008 conviction.
“I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong,” Clinton said in his opening statement, which he shared on social media.
The Republican chair of the House committee probing Epstein, James Comer, described the session as productive. “We believe this was a very productive deposition that President Clinton answered every question — or attempted to answer every question,” Comer said.
However, fellow Republican Nancy Mace alleged there were “inconsistencies” in his testimony without providing specific examples.
Democrats on the committee renewed their call for former President Donald Trump, who also has documented links to Epstein, to be questioned. “Let’s be real, we are talking to the wrong president,” said Democratic committee member Suhas Subramanyam, emphasizing that Clinton had not dodged any questions.
Clinton’s appearance followed his wife Hillary Clinton’s testimony on Thursday, during which she defiantly called for Trump to appear before the panel. She suggested lawmakers should ask Trump “directly under oath about the tens of thousands of times he shows up in the Epstein files.”
In his statement, Clinton did not name Trump directly but said “no person is above the law, even presidents — especially presidents.” Trump responded by expressing skepticism over the process, telling reporters he likes Clinton “and I don’t like seeing him deposed.”
Clinton acknowledged flying on Epstein’s private plane several times in the early 2000s for Clinton Foundation-related humanitarian work but said he never visited the financier’s infamous private Caribbean island.
Comer noted that “Jeffrey Epstein was in the White House 17 times while Bill Clinton was President” and that Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane at least 27 times.
Clinton maintained in his opening statement that “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.”
The depositions are being held in Chappaqua, New York, the Clintons’ residence, where dozens of journalists and Secret Service officers have gathered. The couple initially rejected subpoenas ordering them to testify but agreed after House Republicans threatened to hold them in contempt of Congress.
Being mentioned in the files released by the US Justice Department does not imply wrongdoing, and neither Clinton nor Trump has been accused of a crime or formally investigated in connection with Epstein. Epstein was convicted in 2008 for soliciting sex from girls as young as 14 and died in a New York jail cell in 2019 before facing sex trafficking charges, in a death ruled a suicide.
