Hillary Clinton has delivered a withering rebuke to a congressional committee investigating her alleged links to Jeffrey Epstein, accusing its Republican members of embarking on a “fishing expedition” intended to deflect attention from Donald Trump. In a furious opening statement during a closed-door hearing on Thursday, the former secretary of state described the proceedings as “partisan political theatre” and “an insult to the American people”.
Clinton repeated her insistence that she 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,” she said, according to remarks she shared. The hearing, held at an arts centre near the Clintons’ home in Chappaqua, New York, will also include a deposition by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, on Friday.
The Clintons agreed to appear after being threatened with contempt of Congress charges. In her 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”. She questioned why the committee did not ask Trump directly about his involvement, noting he appears in the Epstein files “tens of thousands of times”.
The hearing was temporarily suspended after a photo of Clinton giving testimony was posted on social media. The picture was reportedly taken by Republican committee member Lauren Boebert, which is against rules for closed-door hearings. Democrats condemned the breach as “unacceptable”. Boebert defended her actions, making a reference to the 2012 Benghazi attack that occurred when Clinton was secretary of state.
After the hearing, Clinton told reporters she would have preferred the testimony to be public. “I don’t know how many times I had to say I did not know Jeffrey Epstein,” she said. She added that questions veered off-topic, including about UFOs and Pizzagate, a repeatedly discredited conspiracy theory. She expressed frustration that no Republican members asked questions about Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell to other witnesses.
