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'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.
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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.
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.
Donald Trump has denied any wrongdoing related to Epstein, and authorities have not accused him of any wrongdoing related to Epstein.
'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.
Comer: questions for Bill Clinton grow after Hillary's deposition
James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee, said the committee’s list of questions for Bill Clinton grew longer after Hillary Clinton’s deposition yesterday, where she deferred a host of questions to her husband.
“So we already had a big portfolio of questions for him, and that increased yesterday,” Comer said at a press conference outside the building where the closed-door deposition was set to begin shortly.
Comer said committee members would be asking about Bill Clinton’s ties to Epstein, including documented visits to the White House and rides on his airplane, and Epstein’s ties to Clinton-related initiatives.
He said he expects video of Hillary Clinton’s testimony to be released either later today or tomorrow, giving the public insight into what was asked and how she responded. He defended the repetitive line of questioning about Epstein to Hillary Clinton.
“Every item of evidence that would suggest Hillary Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein had a close relationship, we went and asked about that,” he said. “So it may have seemed repetitive, because there was a lot of documentation that would suggest that she had a relationship with Epstein.”
Hillary Clinton was adamant that she did not know Jeffrey Epstein and had not met him, to her knowledge.
Nancy Mace, the South Carolina Republican representative, claimed Hillary Clinton responded to some of Mace’s questioning by “screaming” and called Hillary Clinton “unhinged”.
“I hope that President Clinton is less unhinged today than his wife was yesterday,” Mace said.
Julius Constantine Motal
The scene in Chappaqua before Bill Clinton’s deposition:
Comer: Hillary Clinton deferred answers to Bill, who has more documented ties with Epstein
James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee, said on Fox News that Hillary Clinton deferred answers to her husband, former president Bill Clinton, nearly a dozen times during her deposition on Thursday.
“Today, former President Bill Clinton is sitting down with the House Oversight Committee and answering questions under oath,” Comer wrote on X.
Comer suggested Thursday that Bill Clinton’s deposition would be “even longer” than Hillary Clinton’s, as Bill Clinton has more documented ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
“She kept saying, not only did she not have a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, that he was a huckster and, you know, he was a con artist and all of that,” Comer told Fox. “Well, she said many times under oath that she had never met Jeffrey Epstein. But the reason she was asked so many times is we kept presenting new items of evidence.”
Hillary Clinton was questioned on Epstein ties to the Clinton Global Initiative, but said she was in elected office at the time Republicans were asking about, Comer said. But Bill Clinton will likely be asked about these ties to the Clinton network as well.
A little recap of Hillary Clinton’s deposition from the committee yesterday: she repeatedly said she had never met Jeffrey Epstein to her knowledge, and she knew Ghislaine Maxwell casually, but she had no knowledge of their crimes.
“I don’t know how many times I had to say, I don’t know Jeffrey Epstein,” she said in a press conference at the end of the day.
Republicans on the committee asked her about UFOs and the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, a sign of their lack of seriousness with the proceedings, she said.
She also called for the committee to bring Donald Trump in for a deposition, and Democrats on the committee reiterated that demand. Democrats on the committee also demanded that the video and transcript of the hearing with Hillary Clinton be released within 24 hours of its conclusion.
The hearing paused yesterday for a time after Republican representative Lauren Boebert reportedly sent a photo from inside the closed-door meeting to a conservative reporter. The Clintons wanted the hearings to be open to the public and press, which they again requested after the breach, but were unsuccessful.
41% of Americans sympathize more with Palestinians than with Israelis, poll finds
A higher percentage of Americans now sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis in the Middle East, a new Gallup poll released today shows.
According to the poll, 41% of Americans say they sympathize more with Palestinans, compared to 36% who sympathize more with Isrealis.
“The five-percentage-point difference is not statistically significant, but it contrasts with a clear lead for the Israelis only a year ago (46% vs. 33%) and larger leads over the prior 24 years,” Gallup notes in its writeup of the poll results.
Until last year, Israelis consistently polled double-digits ahead with Americans on their Middle East sympathies, but that gap began to narrow in 2019.
The poll also showed a new high for Americans who view the Palestinian territories favorably, at 37%, which trails Israel, at 46%. The percent of Americans who favor an independent Palestinian state nearly matched Gallup’s highest measurement on the topic from 2003, with 57% of Americans in favor.
George Chidi
After the FBI seized elections materials from Fulton county last month, Donald Trump returned once again to his false claim that he beat Joe Biden in Georgia in the 2020 election.
“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over,’” Trump said to Dan Bongino on the former FBI staffer’s podcast earlier this month . “We should take over the voting in at least – many – 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
Later that week, it was revealed that the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who was present at the Fulton county raid, led an investigation into Puerto Rico’s voting machines – taking some machines to examine – last May to identify what her office said were potential vulnerabilities in the island’s electronic voting systems. Taken together, Trump’s comments and actions are pointing toward a possibility Democratic voters have until now only contemplated: the federal government seizing voting machines across the country in a way that disrupts voting in the 2026 midterms.
If the federal government declared some digital voting machines off-limits at the last minute, it would set off a chain of emergency court hearings, leaving elections directors scrambling to find another way to print and count ballots before those cases resolved. Early voting could crater. Election Day voting could be curtailed. And results might not be ready for weeks.
Historically, midterm elections tend to go against the party of a newly-elected president, as Trump has acknowledged, and the president’s efforts to thwart that eventuality are clear across the administration. Last year, he directed Republican-controlled states to gerrymander congressional districts to try to limit opportunities for Democrats to win seats.
The civil rights division of the department of justice has backed challenges to voting rights laws, which advocates say are an attempt to hold on to other seats. A disruption of election apparatuses could be seen as one more mechanism for authoritarian control of the government.
President Donald Trump says the US economy is booming and that he has fixed inflation. But most Americans, including many in his Republican Party, do not see things that way, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
“This is the golden age of America,” Trump said in his State of the Union address on Tuesday. “The roaring economy is roaring like never before.“
The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, completed on Monday, showed 68% of people disagree with a statement that “the US economy is booming,” a claim Trump has repeatedly made since returning to office in January 2025.
Republicans in the survey were sharply divided on how well the economy is doing, a warning sign for the party ahead of the 3 November midterm elections when Trump’s party will defend majorities in the US House of Representatives and Senate.
Some 56% of Republicans thought the economy was booming, while 43% disagreed.
The United States authorised the departure of non-emergency embassy staff from Israel on Friday, as it threatened strikes on Iran and pressed its biggest military build-up in the Middle East in decades.
The move came a day after a round of Oman-mediated talks between Iran and the US seen as a last-ditch bid to avert war, though initial optimism was tempered by Tehran warning Washington must drop “excessive demands” to reach a deal.
The talks follow repeated threats from president Donald Trump to strike Iran while the US military builds up its forces in the region, AFP reported.
As the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, was due to arrive off the coast of key US-ally Israel, the US embassy in the country announced it was allowing non-emergency government personnel and family members to leave “due to safety risks”.
“Persons may wish to consider leaving Israel while commercial flights are available,” the embassy said on its website.
The New York Times reported that US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee sent an email to embassy staff on Friday morning saying that those wishing to leave “should do so TODAY”.
Epstein files contain explicit but unsubstantiated claim that Trump abused minor
Jacqueline Sweet
Three memos that describe four interviews conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2019 contain explicit but unsubstantiated claims that Donald Trump sexually abused a woman when she was a minor in the early 1980s with the assistance of Jeffrey Epstein, according to a Guardian review of those documents.
The Department of Justice did not release those records when it uploaded millions of pages of files related to Epstein beginning in December. The existence of the missing documents was first reported by independent journalist Roger Sollenberger and subsequently confirmed by NPR, causing outrage in Washington and sparking an investigation from congressional Democrats.
The Guardian obtained the missing FBI form 302 reports, which memorialize 25 pages of agents’ notes from the four interviews conducted in the summer and fall of 2019. The notes describe how the woman came forward to tell agents she recognized Epstein from a photo sent by a childhood friend. Only the first session, in which she did not name Trump, made it into the public release. The Guardian has chosen not to publish the woman’s name.
Her allegations have not been verified, and the FBI never brought charges related to her claims, which at times appear outlandish. Her statements also contradict what is known about Epstein’s life in the early 1980s. The millions of investigative documents released by the DoJ have contained explosive allegations that have led to resignations and arrests, but also specious claims that have later proven false. Trump has consistently denied wrongdoing related to Epstein, and said last week: “I did nothing.”
Bill Clinton to face questions over Epstein ties
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
Former US president Bill Clinton will face questions from a Congressional panel on Friday on his well-documented links to Jeffrey Epstein, as Democrats seek to shift focus onto Donald Trump’s own ties to the convicted sex offender.
Clinton features prominently throughout the latest Epstein files disclosures, with the former president insisting that he broke ties with him well before the disgraced billionaire’s 2008 conviction for sex offenses.
Being mentioned in the files released by the US Department of Justice does not imply wrongdoing, and Clinton has not been accused of a crime or formally investigated, AFP reports.
He follows his wife, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who testified on Thursday, calling for Donald Trump – who like Bill Clinton had ties with Epstein – to appear before the panel.
“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,” she said in an opening statement published online.
The depositions are being held behind closed doors even though the Clintons called for them to be open and televised, a move Bill Clinton denounced as akin to a “kangaroo court.”
In other developments:
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Zohran Mamdani, New York’s mayor, met again with Donald Trump in the Oval Office to discuss federal funding for a housing project, and persuaded the president to release a Columbia University student detained by ICE agents.
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Hillary Clinton said that, after she repeatedly told House Republicans she did not know Jeffrey Epstein, their questions got “quite unusual, because I started being asked about UFOs and a series of questions about Pizzagate, one of the most vile, bogus conspiracy theories that was propagated on the internet”.
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The Federal Aviation Administration closed the airspace in an area around Fort Hancock, Texas after congressional Democrats said a military laser-based anti-drone system accidentally shot down a Customs and Border Protection drone.
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Democratic leaders in the US Senate said they will also force a vote “in the coming days” on a war powers resolution to make sure any US participation in military action against Iran requires congressional authorization.
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Thomas Massie, a Republican congressman from Kentucky, called on the justice department to explain why a photograph that appears to show Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, with Jeffrey Epstein, was removed from the public database of Epstein files.
