Former US President Bill Clinton is scheduled to testify before the US Congress for the first time on Friday about his connection to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are demanding clarification about the role of the 79-year-old, who can be seen in several photos from the so-called Epstein files. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the ex-president’s wife, was questioned on Thursday. She then defended her husband.
Bill Clinton’s hearing is extraordinary for a former president. It takes place at a cultural center in Chappaqua, New York, where the Clintons live. Dozens of journalists traveled to the town.
The Clintons initially resisted the subpoena
The Clintons initially resisted the subpoena and only relented when Republicans threatened contempt of Congress proceedings. The opposition Democrats see the Clintons’ subpoena as a political maneuver to distract from US President Donald Trump’s involvement in the Epstein scandal.
Bill and Hillary Clinton later pushed for the hearings to be held publicly – but the committee refused. Bill Clinton then compared the hearing to a “sham court.”
Many photos from the Epstein files show the Democratic politician who served in the White House from 1993 to 2001. In one picture he is lying in a whirlpool, in another he is swimming next to a dark-haired woman, possibly Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
Clinton herself confirmed that she had traveled on Epstein’s private plane several times in the early 2000s. However, this happened in the context of work for his humanitarian foundation. According to Clinton, he never visited Epstein’s infamous private island.
Trump resisted the publication of the Epstein files for months last year before Congress forced their release with the votes of his Republicans. Photos and documents published so far suggest a close relationship between Epstein and Trump. However, neither he nor Bill Clinton has yet been proven to have committed any wrongdoing. Both said they had broken with Epstein before his conviction for sexual assault in a Florida trial in 2008.
Was “not satisfied” with Hillary Clinton’s answers
The Chairman of the Oversight Committee, the Republican, James Comer, said when questioning Bill Clinton that there were “lots of questions” for the ex-president. The aim of the entire investigation is to “understand a lot about Epstein.” When questioning Hillary Clinton on Thursday, committee members were “not satisfied” with the answers to “numerous questions.”
After her questioning, the former foreign minister defended her husband in front of journalists. Asked if she was sure her husband didn’t know about Epstein’s crimes, she replied: “I am.” Her husband’s connection to Epstein “ended several years before anything about Epstein’s criminal activities became known,” Clinton said.
The former Secretary of State and presidential candidate described her hearing before the congressional committee as “long and characterized by many repetitions.” “I don’t know how many times I’ve had to say I didn’t know Jeffrey Epstein,” she said.
Clinton calls for Trump to be heard
Clinton also called for a congressional hearing for Trump. The oversight committee should question the US president “under oath about the tens of thousands of times he appears in the Epstein files.”
Epstein was suspected of having sexually abused more than a thousand minors and young women and of having procured them to celebrities. He was first convicted in 2008 for inciting a minor to engage in prostitution. After a controversial deal with the public prosecutor, he only had to serve 13 months in prison.
A month after Epstein was arrested again in 2019 on charges including sexual abuse of minors, he was found dead in his New York prison cell. According to official information, he took his own life.
