Inside the Clintons’ depositions on Epstein and Maxwell

The Republican-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released videos Monday of the closed-door depositions of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, part of its investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Bill Clinton appeared before the committee on Friday, marking the first time a former president had been compelled to testify before Congress under a subpoena. During his lengthy deposition, the former president sought to distance himself from Epstein, saying he had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and stopped associating with him years before his first guilty plea, in 2008.

“There was nothing that I saw when I was around him that made me realize that he was trafficking women,” Clinton told the committee. “I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong.”

In her hours-long deposition Thursday, Hillary Clinton said she had no recollection of ever meeting Epstein and had known Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell only “casually, as an acquaintance.” Hillary Clinton derided the deposition as “political theater” and sharply questioned why she was being deposed.

House Republicans have issued subpoenas to several people — mostly Democrats — mentioned in the millions of files related to the federal government’s Epstein investigation that have been released by the Justice Department.

They have not called in President Donald Trump, who had a long-standing friendship with Epstein. The president has said that he knew Epstein socially in Palm Beach, Fla., and that they had a falling out in the mid-2000s. Trump has maintained that he did not know about Epstein’s criminal behavior.

Here are some of the highlights of the depositions:

In his deposition, Bill Clinton said his former treasury secretary Larry Summers, then the president of Harvard University, first recommended that he strike up an acquaintance with Jeffrey Epstein.

As Clinton recalled, Summers — who recently resigned his positions at Harvard because of his association with Epstein — called Clinton shortly after he left office, in late 2001 or early 2002, when Clinton was setting up a charitable foundation.

Summers told him of “a man named Jeffrey Epstein” who had made a multimillion-dollar contribution to brain research, Clinton said, and described Epstein as an “information-hungry person” who owned a “massive airplane” and “wanted to spend some time talking to me about economics and politics.”

Clinton said he saw the plane as an economical means of doing international travel for his foundation.

After taking about a half-dozen trips aboard Epstein’s jet over a couple of years, Clinton said, he quit doing so because his foundation had launched and he had offers of transportation from people he knew better.

Clinton said he considered Epstein “an interesting man, but I didn’t think he was really interested in what I was doing.”

Clinton told the committee that he first learned of Epstein’s crimes “in 2008, when he was prosecuted. There was nothing that I saw when I was around him that made me realize that he was trafficking women.”

At another point, he told the committee, “I don’t believe any law enforcement agency has ever asked me [about Epstein], and I don’t know enough to volunteer anything.”

Hillary Clinton repeatedly testified that she did not know Epstein. She characterized him as not being on her “radar,” but was told in preparation for the deposition that she and Epstein both attended an event at the White House that was put on by the White House Historical Association.

“I have no recollection, in any way, of ever having any conversation at the White House or in any other place or on any kind of device of any sort. I knew nothing about him,” Hillary Clinton said when asked if she had any communication with Epstein.

She testified that she knew Maxwell “casually” as someone who dated an acquaintance of hers — Ted Waitt, a software developer.

Waitt, Clinton said, brought Maxwell as a guest to the wedding of the Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea, in 2010.

Clinton said that she did not consider Maxwell a friend and that her daughter would have been “friendlier” with Maxwell, but that she “had no idea” how often they interacted.

Clinton declined to characterize the relationship between Maxwell and Bill Clinton.

“He’ll have to answer that,” she said when asked if Bill Clinton and Maxwell were friends.

Bill Clinton was shown a photo of himself in a hot tub that was among the Epstein files and that has generated much attention.

He recalled that it was taken while he was in Brunei at the end of a long leg of one of his Asia trips.

He and his party, including Epstein, were guests at a hotel owned by the sultan of Brunei, with whom Clinton had established a warm relationship while he was president, and spent time in the hot tub and pool, which were located on the same floor as some of their suites.

“I swam around. I sat in the hot tub for five minutes or whatever it was. I got up and went to bed,” Clinton said.

A Democrat on the committee, Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, grilled Bill Clinton on reports that he had been on Epstein’s island.

Clinton repeatedly denied he had ever visited the island. He also denied a report, cited by Stansbury, that he had visited Epstein’s home while he was president.

Bill Clinton said his first recollection of meeting Maxwell was on his first flight aboard Epstein’s plane, when she was working for the financier.

Clinton’s relationship with her “lasted longer and was more extensive than my relationship with Mr. Epstein,” he said, because she started “going with” Waitt, the tech billionaire, who became a major donor to the Clinton Foundation.

Clinton said that, by his recollection, he has not been in contact with her for a decade or more.

He said he did not learn about her participation in Epstein’s sexual abuse of minor girls until “the first evidence against her came out in 2019.”

Nearly 80 minutes into the deposition, Hillary Clinton’s lawyer interrupted Republican questioning, saying pictures of the former secretary of state testifying had been posted online.

The attorney argued that the pictures, which had been shared by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R., Colo.), violated the committee’s rules — and noted that the Clintons had repeatedly asked that the depositions be held in public.

Visibly frustrated, Hillary Clinton told Republicans that if they were going to be sharing pictures of the interview, she was “done.”

“You can hold me in contempt from now until the cows come home. This is just typical behavior,” she said. “We all are abiding by the same rules.”

The hearing was then paused. When the interview resumed, Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), the committee’s chairman, said he advised Republicans that no pictures or videos of the deposition could be released.

The Clintons were accompanied by two lawyers who for decades have been among the most trusted and protective allies in their orbit.

David Kendall is the Clintons’ longtime personal attorney, and Cheryl Mills was deputy White House counsel during Bill Clinton’s presidency and chief of staff to Hillary Clinton at the State Department. Both are known for their discretion and were part of the legal team that defended Bill Clinton in his 1999 Senate impeachment trial, in which he was acquitted.