Hillary Clinton used her forced appearance on Thursday before a Republican-led panel probing Jeffrey Epstein to go on the offensive and demand President Donald Trump testify about his own links to the sex offender.
Clinton told the congressional committee she had no information about Epstein’s crimes, never recalled encountering him, and had never visited his island or flown on his plane, accusing the panel of trying to “protect one public official” — Trump.
James Comer, who chairs the committee that will also grill former president Bill Clinton on Friday, said “the purpose of the whole investigation is to try to understand many things about Epstein” — the deceased convicted sex offender.
Clinton challenged the panel saying “if this committee is serious about learning the truth about Epstein’s trafficking crimes…it would ask (Trump) directly under oath about the tens of thousands of times he shows up in the Epstein files.”
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The top Democrat on the committee, Robert Garcia, also called on Trump to testify “to answer the questions that are being asked across this country from survivors.”
“That should happen immediately,” he said later.
Democratic committee member Suhas Subramanyam said that “missing FBI files” omitted from the Epstein documents disclosures contain “serious accusations around sexual abuse” against Trump.
The Republican-led House Oversight Committee is probing those who were linked to Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial.
The Clintons had initially rejected subpoenas ordering them to testify in the panel’s probe, but the Democratic power couple agreed to do so after House Republicans threatened to hold them in contempt of Congress.
Hillary Clinton said in her opening statement to the panel that it “justified its subpoena to me based on its assumption that I have information regarding the investigations into the criminal activities of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.”
“Let me be as clear as I can. I do not.”
The hearing was dramatically paused for a brief time after a photo of Clinton in the deposition was posted online — an apparent breach of the closed-door arrangement.
“What is not acceptable is oversight Republicans breaking their own committee rules… by releasing photos,” Subramanyam said.
Democrats say the investigation is being weaponised to attack political opponents of Trump rather than to conduct legitimate oversight.
