Hillary Clinton\u00a0appeared before a congressional committee\u00a0investigating her supposed links to Jeffrey Epstein \u2013 and accused its Republican members of targeting her in a bid to distract from Donald Trump\u2019s involvement with the convicted sex offender.<\/p>\n
Related:\u00a0Hillary Clinton accuses Republicans of \u2018fishing expedition\u2019 in Epstein testimony<\/p>\n
The former US secretary of state answered questions for hours during a closed-door session on Thursday, a day before her husband, the former US president Bill Clinton, was also due to appear.<\/p>\n
The US justice department has released millions of files related to Epstein in recent months, indicating that many high-profile figures, including the former prince\u00a0Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, continued friendships with him after his conviction of child sex offences in 2008.<\/p>\n
Here are the key moments from Thursday\u2019s testimony.<\/p>\n
Clinton heavily criticised the House of Representatives\u2019 oversight committee \u2013 and its Republican majority \u2013 in her opening statement.<\/p>\n
The proceedings were not designed to seek truth and justice for the victims and survivors of Epstein\u2019s crimes, she argued.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know how many times I had to say I did not know Jeffrey Epstein,\u201d Clinton told reporters after her deposition. \u201cI never went to his island. I never went to his homes. I never went to his offices.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the majority was serious, it would not waste time on fishing expeditions. There is too much that needs to be done. What is being held back? Who is being protected? And why the cover-up?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The questions were \u201crepetitive\u201d, according to Clinton. \u201cThey asked literally the same questions over and over again, which didn\u2019t seem to me to be very productive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Late into the session, questions are said to have veered off course. \u201cIt got quite unusual,\u201d Clinton told reporters, \u201cbecause I started being asked about UFOs and a series of questions about Pizzagate, one of the most vile bogus conspiracy theories\u201d.<\/p>\n
Clinton was referring to false, widely disseminated musings in 2016 that a Washington DC pizzeria was a front for a child sex ring run by her, and that New York City police had discovered a paedophilia ring linked to Democrats.<\/p>\n
The deposition of Clinton was interrupted when Lauren Boebert, a Republican member of the committee, leaked a photo from the room. Conservative influencer Benny Johnson\u00a0published the image\u00a0on social media platform X stating that Clinton \u201cdoes not look happy\u201d.<\/p>\n
The hearing was temporarily suspended at the request of Clinton\u2019s legal team. It is against the rules for witnesses or lawmakers to take pictures during closed-door congressional hearings.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had agreed upon rules, based on the fact it was going to be a closed hearing, at their demand,\u201d Clinton said after the session. \u201cAnd one of the members violated that rule, which was very upsetting, because it suggested that they might violate other of our agreements.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clinton had pushed for Republicans to hold a public hearing.<\/p>\n
Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the committee, told reporters that Trump and his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, should testify over their ties with Epstein.<\/p>\n
Lutnick has\u00a0admitted to visiting Epstein\u2019s private island\u00a0years after he initially said that he had broken off ties.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s relationship with Epstein has proven to be a political landmine for the president, who has consistently denied wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
They were once friends, but Trump has claimed that he booted Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club because the late financier \u201cstole\u201d staffers.<\/p>\n
Clinton said: \u201cIf this committee is serious about learning the truth about Epstein\u2019s trafficking crimes, it would not rely on press gaggles to get answers from our current president on his involvement. It would ask him directly under oath about the tens of thousands of times he shows up in the Epstein files.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oversight committee chair James Comer, a Republican, said it was \u201cpossible\u201d the committee might subpoena Lutnick, but dismissed the idea of having Trump appear before the panel.<\/p>\n
\u201cPresident Trump has answered hundreds if not thousands of questions from you all about Epstein and I think he\u2019s been very transparent in releasing the documents,\u201d Comer told reporters.<\/p>\n
Bill Clinton is due to be deposed by the committee on Friday, amid questions over his former\u00a0relationship with Epstein. Clinton, like a bevy of other high-powered men, including Trump, had a well-documented social relationship with Epstein in the late 1990s and early 2000s.<\/p>\n
Asked by a reporter on Thursday if she was \u201c100% confident\u201d her husband was unaware of Epstein\u2019s crimes when he spent time with him before the late sex offender\u2019s first arrest, Hillary Clinton responded: \u201cI am, and I think the chronology of the connection that he had with \u2026 Epstein ended years, several years before anything about Epstein\u2019s criminal activities came to light.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the Clintons are appearing in closed-door sessions, transcripts and video of both their sessions are expected to be made public.<\/p>\n
Reuters contributed reporting<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hillary Clinton\u00a0appeared before a congressional committee\u00a0investigating her supposed links to Jeffrey Epstein \u2013 and accused its Republican members<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2719,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics","category-us"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2718"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2720,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2718\/revisions\/2720"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}