This evening will be the first time that a former president will be forced to testify before Congress: Bill Clinton, after his wife’s deposition last night, will have to answer questions from the Supervisory Commission on his relationships with Jeffrey Epstein. A further sign that the demand for a reckoning over Epstein’s abuse of underage girls has become a nearly unstoppable force on Capitol Hill and beyond. A wave born in America and which, after having swept away the former Prince Andrew and the former British ambassador to the USA Peter Mandelson overseas, is ready to shake Washington again.
Yesterday, after six and a half hours spent behind closed doors with lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she had “answered each of their questions as completely as I could, based on what I knew.” He stressed that he had never met Epstein or had any communications with him. Clinton also said that she had met Ghislaine Maxwell, convicted in connection with Epstein’s crimes, “coincidentally as an acquaintance”, and that Maxwell “had come as a chaperone, as a guest, of someone who had been invited” to her daughter Chelsea Clinton’s wedding in 2010.
The deposition – which took place in New York, near where Hillary Clinton lives with the former president – is one of the most high-profile interrogations conducted so far as part of the Republican-led commission’s investigation into Epstein. It comes after both Clintons strenuously resisted testifying in what they denounced as a Republican plot against them, only to back down at the prospect of being charged with contempt of Congress.
«I was not aware of his crimes. I don’t remember meeting him and I have never been to his island, nor to his house or his offices.” Hillary Clinton had no hesitations before the House Oversight Committee who wanted to hear her in the context of the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
“A commission that aspires to transparency should get to the bottom of the story of the files that disappeared from the Department of Justice website, those in which a victim accuses Donald Trump of disgusting crimes,” said the former Secretary of State, pointing the finger at the person who, exactly ten years ago, inflicted on her the heaviest political defeat of her life.
A wound that still burns and that Hillary has not forgotten. Her combative tones right from the opening statements of her river deposition in Chappaqua, New York, showed a former first lady ready to fight and remove a few pebbles from her shoe against the Trump who repeatedly insulted her.
As well as intending to once again defend her husband Bill. For Hillary, in fact, the Epstein case is only the latest in a long series of episodes that have seen her stoically take the field in support of her ‘Bill’. He did it for the Lewinski case, enduring humiliation in front of the world for years. He had done this many times before.
In January 1992, sitting on a couch next to her husband, she fielded relentless questions about her married life after a woman, Gennifer Flowers, claimed a 12-year romance with Bill.
“I’m not sitting here, a little woman next to her man like Tammy Wynette. I’m sitting here because I love and respect him,” she said at the time. 34 years later, with the same approach and an even more decisive attitude, Hillary finds herself in the same situation: protecting Bill from the Epstein scandal. The former president dated the pedophile before he was accused of sex crimes. He flew to the island at least four times, he was immortalized several times with the pedophile and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, even in a swimming pool. All episodes on which it will now be up to the former president to clarify. Epstein “was an atrocious individual, but he is not the only one. This is not an isolated case, nor a political scandal. It is a global plague with an unimaginable human cost,” the former secretary of state explained to the Republican and Democratic deputies who questioned her. He then urged them not to settle for “listening to press releases from the president about his involvement.”
Trump – is Hillary’s message – should be questioned “under oath” to ask him “directly to explain why his name appears hundreds of thousands of times. Who are they covering up?”.
The former first lady’s request is supported by Democrats, who believe the president should follow the Clintons and show up to be heard. An advice that Trump is unlikely to follow: the president considers himself completely “exonerated” from the scandal on the basis of the latest published files, from which, however, about fifty pages relating to the accusations of a minor against him are missing. A shortcoming which the Democrats intend to investigate. The tycoon, however, is not the only one to tremble for Epstein in his administration. If the Minister of Justice Pam Bondi almost risked her job for having mismanaged, according to the White House, the diffusion of the files, there is also the target of criticism his commerce secretary Howard Lutnick After repeatedly denying contacts and saying he was disgusted by the pedophile, Lutnick was forced to admit that he had visited the pedophile’s island and had contacted him in some cases to participate in fundraisers, one for Hillary candidate for the White House.
After the testimony, Clinton stopped outside the courtroom to respond to reporters. Asked by CNN if she was certain her husband was unaware of Epstein’s crimes, Hillary Clinton responded: “I am.” That relationship, he said, “ended several years before anything about Epstein’s criminal activities came to light.”
Bill Clinton was never accused by law enforcement of any wrongdoing related to Epstein. The American media revealed that the former president traveled on Epstein’s private plane at least 16 times and is present in the files published by the Department of Justice photographed together with women in a jacuzzi, as well as with Maxwell.