‘I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong,’ says Bill Clinton in opening statement on Epstein ties
Former president Bill Clinton has delivered his opening statement to lawmakers on the House oversight committee’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation.
“I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong,” Clinton said. Here’s the extract:
First, I had no idea of the crimes Epstein was committing. No matter how many photos you show me, I have two things that at the end of the day matter more than your interpretation of those 20-year-old photos.
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.
I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong.
A reminder that Clinton has not been accused of wrongdoing.
Key events
As we reported earlier, during a break in Bill Clinton’s testimony, House oversight committee chair James Comer told reporters that the former president had told the committee that Donald Trump had never said anything to him to make him think he was involved in criminal activity with Epstein.
But ranking member Robert Garcia, of California, said that Comer’s remarks were “not a complete accurate description of what was said”. He said Clinton “did bring up some additional information about some discussions with President Trump”, and a full record of what was said “brings up some very important new questions about comments that President Trump has actually said in the past”. Garcia didn’t disclose any details but called for the complete transcript to be released.
Republican representative Nancy Mace, of South Carolina, posted this on X earlier about New Mexico’s Melanie Stansbury, a Democrat:
I am going to say something I never thought I’d ever say, so please forgive me, @Rep_Stansbury showed courage and bravery today in her questioning of President Clinton. Thank you, Rep. Stansbury. Every survivor thanks you.
Democrats believe they have the votes to subpoena Lutnick in Epstein investigation
Democrats on the House oversight committee have the votes to force Trump’s commerce secretary Howard Lutnick to testify over his ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, representative Ro Khanna told reporters this morning.
“I believe we will have the votes to subpoena him,” Khanna said outside Chappaqua Performing Arts Center in New York ahead of Bill Clinton’s deposition.
Republican Nancy Mace, of South Caroline, joined today in calling for the commerce secretary to come before the committee as part of its Epstein investigation.
Lutnick has come under intense scrutiny after Epstein-related files released by the DoJ last year contradicted his previous claims of having distanced himself Epstein in 2005 and revealed the extent of his relationship with the disgraced financier.
Lutnick was a longtime next-door neighbor of Epstein in New York but said on a podcast several months ago that he severed ties with Epstein following a 2005 tour of Epstein’s home that disturbed Lutnick and his wife after Epstein used sexual innuendo to explain why he owned a massage table in a room of his home.
However, the DoJ’s release of case files showed that Lutnick actually had two engagements with Epstein years later. He attended a 2011 event at Epstein’s home, and his family had lunch with Epstein on his private island in 2012 – four years after Epstein was sentenced to 13 months in jail for procuring a minor for prostitution.
The Wall Street billionaire and longtime Trump ally admitted to the 2012 lunch earlier this month in testimony before the Senate appropriations committee.
I did have lunch with him, as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation. My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies. I had another couple with – they were there as well, with their children. And we had lunch on the island, that is true, for an hour.
In that testimony, Lutnick insisted that he “barely had anything to do” with Epstein. He testified:
I’m glad to be here to make it clear that I met Jeffrey Epstein when he moved, when I moved to a house next door to him in New York. Over the next 14 years, I met him two other times that I can recall, two times. So six years later, I met him, and then a year and a half after that, I met him, and never again.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have called for Lutnick’s resignation following his initial misrepresentation of the relationship. “He should be removed from office and at a minimum should come before the committee,” the House oversight committee’s top Democrat, Robert Garcia, has said.
As we’ve reported, Donald Trump earlier defended his commerce secretary, calling him a “very innocent guy” who is “doing a great job”.
Lutnick has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.
Democrats say Clinton’s cooperation and transparency sets precedent for summoning presidents
Democrats on the committee praised former president Bill Clinton for attending the deposition, saying he has been transparent and is answering tough questions about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Updating the media just now outside the hearing in Chappaqua, they said that the former president made more sense to question than Hillary Clinton, given he had documented interactions with Epstein over the years. Bill Clinton has been cooperative and thorough in his responses, they said.
“We are thankful that President Clinton came in and answered tough questions from both the minority party and the majority party,” ranking member Robert Garcia said. “We also think it’s important to note … that he does not understand nor do we why we spent so much time yesterday grilling Secretary Clinton.”
But, they say, now that a former president has come to the committee, it shows that Donald Trump should come in as well.
“We have a new precedent in this country,” Garcia said. “We can now demand presidents and former presidents to testify in front of the oversight committee. So we are once again demanding that now President Trump, who was in the Epstein files almost more than anyone else besides Ghislaine Maxwell, answer our questions.”
Garcia also pushed back on James Comer’s comment earlier that Bill Clinton said it was up to the committee whether to bring Trump in for questioning, saying he didn’t think Comer’s accounting was a complete and accurate summation of what Clinton said.
Comer: Clinton defers to House committee when asked about summoning Trump
James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee, just updated the media on a response from former president Bill Clinton regarding Donald Trump.
He said Democratic ranking member Robert Garcia asked Clinton whether Trump should be called to answer questions from the committee.
“And President Clinton said, that’s for you to decide,” Comer said. “And the President went on to say, President Trump has never said anything to me to make me think he was involved.”
Trump on Bill Clinton: ‘I don’t like seeing him deposed’
Donald Trump weighed in on Bill Clinton appearing before the committee, according to a White House pool report.
“I don’t like seeing him deposed. But they certainly went after me more than that,” Trump said.
CNN’s Kristen Holmes said Trump told her that commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, who has ties with Epstein, was a “very innocent guy” who is “doing a great job”. He “would go in and do whatever he has to say”, Trump said.
Sitting and former presidents only rarely have appeared before members of Congress, making Bill Clinton’s testimony today a novelty – and providing Democrats another avenue to push for Donald Trump to talk to the committee, given his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Gerald Ford is the last former president to appear before a congressional committee, an accounting of presidential congressional hearings compiled by the US Senate shows.
Ford, in 1983, talked to a Senate subcommittee on the US constitution, around the time of the bicentennial of the US constitution. Before that, in 1955, Harry Truman, then a former president, talked to a Senate committee on foreign relations about the United Nations charter.
Ford was also the last sitting US president to appear before Congress. In 1974, he voluntarily appeared before a House subcommittee to discuss his reasoning for pardoning former president Richard Nixon.
With Bill Clinton’s deposition under way, here’s a brief recap of some of the photos he appears in from the tranche of millions of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein released by the US justice department last year.
The former president has maintained that he was an acquaintance of Epstein’s but stopped communicating with him at least a decade before his arrest in 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges. He flew on Epstein’s plane several times in the early 2000s after he left office and says he severed ties in the mid-2000s, several years before Epstein’s 2008 conviction of soliciting prostitution from a minor.
A reminder that Clinton is not accused of any wrongdoing related to Epstein, and appearing in the files is not in itself evidence of any wrongdoing.
More from Bill Clinton’s opening remarks.
The former president said he only had a “brief acquaintance with Epstein” that ended “years before his crimes came to light” and that he never saw “what was truly going on”. Here’s the extract:
The girls and women whose lives Jeffrey Epstein destroyed deserve not only justice, but healing. They’ve been waiting too long for both. Though my brief acquaintance with Epstein ended years before his crimes came to light, and though I never witnessed during our limited 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.
He added that he would “often” say “I don’t recall”, as his interactions with Epstein were such a long time ago, and said this might be “unsatisfying” to lawmakers.
Bill Clinton also made reference to his wife Hillary Clinton’s six-hour-plus grilling from the committee yesterday, saying it was “simply not right” that she was brought in.
Before we start, I have to get personal. You made Hillary come in. She had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. Nothing. She has no memory of even meeting him. She neither traveled with him nor visited any of his properties. Whether you subpoenaed 10 people or 10,000, including her was simply not right.
Bill Clinton says he had no idea of Epstein’s crimes
In his opening statement, former president Bill Clinton also said he saw no signs of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes.
As someone who grew up in a home with domestic abuse, not only would I have not 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.
But even with 20/20 hindsight, I saw nothing that ever gave me pause. 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.
‘I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong,’ says Bill Clinton in opening statement on Epstein ties
Former president Bill Clinton has delivered his opening statement to lawmakers on the House oversight committee’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation.
“I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong,” Clinton said. Here’s the extract:
First, I had no idea of the crimes Epstein was committing. No matter how many photos you show me, I have two things that at the end of the day matter more than your interpretation of those 20-year-old photos.
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.
I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong.
A reminder that Clinton has not been accused of wrongdoing.
Democrats demand Trump testify over Epstein ties, saying GOP set a new precedent with Bill Clinton’s deposition
Robert Garcia also said that Democrats are demanding that Donald Trump testify before the House oversight committee about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, as “Republicans have now set a new precedent, which is to bring in presidents and former presidents to testify”.
Trump appears in the Epstein files “almost more than anybody else”, Garcia said.
It’s time for the president to answer why there are files missing from the DoJ, why there’s been a White House cover-up, and why they continue in that administration to call this investigation a hoax.
Democrat Ro Khanna also told reporters ahead of Bill Clinton’s deposition:
A new precedent has been set in America today. Before this we had the ‘Trump Rule.’ Trump defied, as all of you know, a congressional subpoena with the January 6th Committee. He said presidents don’t have to testify. Now we have the ‘Clinton Rule,’ which is that presidents and their families have to testify when Congress issues a subpoena.
A reminder that Bill Clinton’s closed-door deposition in Chappaqua, New York, today marks the first time a former president has been compelled to testify to Congress. It came a day after his wife, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, appeared before lawmakers for her own deposition.
Trump has consistently denied wrongdoing related to Epstein, and said last week: “I did nothing.”
‘We do not want a sideshow today, says top Democrat
For the Democrats on the House oversight committee, ranking member Robert Garcia told reporters ahead of Bill Clinton’s deposition:
What we’re interested in today is a serious deposition. We have real questions that deserve serious answers from former president Clinton.
We have said from day one that Democrats want to talk to anyone, whether they are a Republican or a Democrat, no matter how powerful they are, whatever position that they’ve been in.
He said that they do not want to see another “sideshow” today, referring to questions from Republicans about UFOs and conspiracy theories during Hillary Clinton’s deposition yesterday.
Bill Clinton arrives to testify before House committee investigating Epstein links
The motorcade carrying Bill Clinton appears to have arrived at the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center in New York.
