‘I did nothing wrong’: Bill Clinton denies knowledge of Epstein abuse in deposition

Former President Clinton said he “did nothing wrong” and had “no idea of the crimes” Jeffrey Epstein was committing as he kicked off a deposition with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Friday.

“Though my brief acquaintance with Epstein ended years before his crimes came to light, and though I never witnessed during our interactions any indication of what was truly going on, I am here to offer what little I know so that it might prevent anything like this from ever happening again,” Clinton said in a prepared opening statement posted on social media.

He went on to say that he had “no idea of the crimes Epstein was committing,” and “saw nothing that ever gave me pause.”

“I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong,” Clinton said.

Clinton is sitting for a deposition with the committee in Chappaqua, N.Y., after he and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, reversed course and agreed to interviews as they faced being held in contempt of Congress for defying a congressional subpoena.

Hillary Clinton on Thursday sat for an hours-long deposition with the committee, in which she told the panel that she did not recall ever meeting Epstein, only knew Ghislaine Maxwell as a casual acquaintance, and had no knowledge of their criminal activities. 

The former president bristled at his wife being called to appear.

“But before we start, I have to get personal. You made Hillary come in. She had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. Nothing,” Clinton said. “Whether you subpoenaed 10 people or 10,000, including her was simply not right.”

Bill Clinton, however, had a documented friendship with Epstein in the 1990s through about 2003. Epstein visited the White House during the Clinton administration; Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane multiple times; and photos have emerged of Clinton and Epstein. Clinton has said that he never visited Epstein’s island.

“As someone who grew up in a home with domestic abuse, 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 myself and led the call for justice for his crimes, not sweetheart deals,” Clinton said.

“No matter how many photos you show me, I have two things at the end of the day matter more than your interpretation of those 20-year-old photos,” Clinton added. “I know what I saw, and more importantly, what I didn’t see. I know what I did, and more importantly, what I didn’t do.”

Hillary Clinton told reporters on Thursday that she was confident that her husband did not know anything about Epstein’s crimes, noting the chronology of their connection. Bill Clinton’s relationship with Epstein ended “several years” before the late financier was convicted of procuring a minor for prostitution in 2008.

Bill Clinton noted that too.

“We are only here because he hid it from everyone so well for so long. And by the time it came to light with his 2008 guilty plea, I had long stopped associating with him,” Clinton said.

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said that Hillary Clinton’s deposition will inform their line of questioning of the former president.

“Yesterday, Ms. Clinton deferred a lot of questions to her husband today. There were at least a dozen times when she said, ‘You’ll have to ask my husband that, I can’t answer that,’” Comer said in a press conference ahead of the deposition. “So, we already had a big portfolio of questions for him, and that increased yesterday.”

Democrats on the Oversight panel have warned that by compelling a former president to comply with a congressional subpoena, Republicans have set a new precedent — one that could lead to Democrats eventually forcing President Trump to testify when they are back in power. 

Oversight ranking member Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and other Democrats are calling for Trump to testify to the committee about documents they allege are missing from the Department of Justice’s disclosure of the so-called Epstein Files, which include unverified allegations of sexual abuse against Trump. The DOJ said Wednesday that it is reviewing the files that appear to be missing.

“Before this, we had the Trump rule. Trump defied, as all of you know, a congressional subpoena with the January 6 Committee. He said, presidents don’t have to testify,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said in a press conference before the deposition. “Now we have the Clinton rule, which is that presidents and their families have to testify when Congress issues a subpoena, and that means that Donald Trump needs to come before our committee and explain what he knew about Epstein and explain why we have not had a full release of the documents.”

The Oversight panel had voted on a bipartisan basis to subpoena the Clintons and several other former government officials last year, and spent months negotiating with the Clintons over how they could provide testimony about their links to Epstein.

As they attempted to avoid depositions, the Clintons argued that they had already provided the committee with all the information they had about Epstein and Maxwell, provided sworn statements that they had no knowledge of their criminal activities, and argued that the subpoenas were invalid. 

Later, they sought to have Hillary Clinton provide a sworn statement instead of testifying, and sought to limit the former president’s deposition to a four-hour interview. 

In January, nine Democrats on the panel voted with Republicans to hold the former president in contempt of Congress over the refusal to sit for a deposition, while three Democrats voted to hold Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress.

Hillary Clinton on Thursday also bristled at Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) leaking a photo of her during the deposition, in violation of agreed-upon rules, and about Republican members asking about UFOs and the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.

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