Hillary Clinton accuses Republicans of ‘political theatre’ in Epstein probe

Hillary Clinton accused Republican lawmakers of “partisan political theatre” and seeking to protect Donald Trump, as she testified before lawmakers investigating the US government’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case on Thursday.

In a blistering opening statement, Clinton accused the House oversight committee of compelling her testimony in order to “distract attention from President [Donald] Trump’s actions and to cover them up despite legitimate calls for answers”.

The former secretary of state and her husband, the former president Bill Clinton, had earlier this month agreed to testify in the probe after Republicans on the committee threatened to hold the couple in contempt of Congress. Bill Clinton was scheduled to provide his own deposition on Friday. 

Hillary Clinton said in the closed-door deposition that she did not have information regarding federal investigations into Epstein or his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence on sex-trafficking charges.

Clinton, who was the Democratic nominee for president in 2016, said she had “no idea” about Epstein’s or Maxwell’s criminal activities and did not “recall ever encountering” the late convicted sex offender, who was found dead in his jail cell awaiting trial in 2019.

Clinton said Republican lawmakers had made “little effort to call the people who show up most prominently in the Epstein files” and were part of an “institutional failure . . . designed to protect one political party and one public official, rather than to seek truth and justice for the victims and survivors, as well as the public”.

She also called on the committee to “get to the bottom” of allegations the justice department withheld files linked to Epstein in which “a survivor accuses President Trump of heinous crimes”.

Congress last year passed a law that required the Department of Justice to release all unclassified material in the Epstein case. However, Democratic lawmakers have launched an investigation into allegations that the DoJ withheld information about a minor who accused Trump of sexual abuse, after a report from National Public Radio.

Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, on Wednesday sent US attorney-general Pam Bondi a letter asking her to explain the grounds for allegedly withholding material linked to Trump and to disclose whether the president was being investigated for sexual abuse.  

Bondi told a congressional committee earlier this month there was “no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime”.

The attorney-general has come under fire for not meeting Epstein’s victims and for the DoJ initially botching redactions that in some cases revealed victims’ names.

Bondi has said she was “deeply sorry for what any victim . . . has been through” and that “any accusations of criminal wrongdoing will be taken seriously and investigated”. 

Asked for comment, the DoJ said: “Fortunately, the Department does not subscribe to Secretary Clinton’s famously effective ‘BleachBit and hammers’ method of document review and release,” in an apparent reference to the FBI’s 2016 investigation into her use of personal emails while serving as secretary of state.

According to the FBI, a program named BleachBit was used to delete files and a Clinton aide used a hammer to destroy her mobile devices. The DoJ ultimately did not file charges against her.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said Trump had been “totally exonerated on anything related to Epstein”.

“[B]y releasing thousands of pages of documents, co-operating with the House oversight committee’s subpoena request, signing the Epstein Files Transparency Act and calling for more investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends, President Trump has done more for Epstein’s victims than anyone before him,” Jackson said.

The DoJ has said that Democrats on the oversight committee “should stop misleading the public” and that all Epstein documents “have been produced” unless the material was a duplicate, privileged or part of a federal investigation, according to a post on X.