WASHINGTON, DC – For former president Bill Clinton, Friday was a day of reckoning.
Whatever the shortcomings of the House Oversight Committee’s politicised and entirely inadequate probe of Jeffrey Epstein and his relationships with the wealthy and powerful, it was quite a moment for a former occupant of the Oval Office to be forced to face the music.
Clinton insisted: “I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong. I saw nothing that ever gave me pause.”
Indeed, he told members of the committee in his opening statement that “as someone who grew up in a home with domestic abuse, not only would I not have 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”.
He chided the committee for dragging his wife, Hillary, before them the previous day. “Whether you subpoenaed 10 people or 10,000, including her was simply not right,” he insisted, repeating the former first lady’s claims that she never met Epstein, never visited his homes or offices, and never travelled to his island in the Caribbean.
But her husband was a different matter. The former president has acknowledged flying on Epstein’s private plane, dubbed the “Lolita Express”, on four occasions. Some documents in the Epstein files suggest he may have clambered aboard the jet as many as six times.
Donald Trump has claimed Clinton visited Epstein’s island “supposedly 28 times”, but the former president insists he never traveled there.
President Trump’s pliant Department of Justice liberally released several photographs of the former president in Epstein’s company, and also with women whose identities were redacted.
Clinton denies any wrongdoing and Democrats argue the release of the images was politically motivated, and designed to divert the public’s attention away from questions about Trump’s friendship with the deceased financier.
During Joe Biden’s four years in office, the Democrats can fairly be faulted for evincing no urgency about getting to the bottom of the Epstein affair.
Indeed, as late as last July, Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House of Representatives and a powerhouse within the Democratic Party, insisted that calls for the files to be made public were a “major distraction” that was “off the subject of what [Republicans] are doing… that is harmful to the kitchen table”.
That messaging now appears at best, tone-deaf, and at worst, an effort to protect Clinton and other powerful Democrats who are mentioned in the files.
Only this week, one of them – former Treasury secretary Larry Summers – belatedly announced his decision to step down from his teaching post at Harvard University. He is revealed in the files to have maintained a friendship with Epstein until one day before his 2019 arrest for alleged sex trafficking.
Other top Democrats to lose their highly paid perches include former president Barack Obama’s White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler, who resigned as Goldman Sachs’ chief legal officer earlier this month.
But it was Trump who cast a heavy shadow over the Clintons’ depositions in upstate New York. During a break in proceedings on Friday, Rep Jim Comer of Kentucky, who chairs the Oversight Committee, accused the media of having an “obsession” with Trump and claimed Bill Clinton had been asked by Democrats whether, as they are now demanding, the President should be hauled before the panel.
“That’s for you to decide,” Clinton reportedly answered, with Comer claiming the former president had also told Democrats that “Trump has never said anything to me to make me think he was involved”.
But Rep Maxwell Alejandro, a Democrat from Florida, contradicted Comer. “President Clinton said that Trump told him that he had a falling-out with Epstein due to a land dispute. This directly refutes Trump’s claims,” he wrote on social media, referencing the President’s earlier, unsubstantiated claim that the two men’s argument was over Epstein’s efforts to steal staff away from his Mar-a-Lago club.
The public will get their chance to read the depositions in full, whenever Comer decides to release transcripts.
On Thursday, several top Republicans urged the Department of Justice to release all files still in its possession that relate to Epstein.
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Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, advised Attorney General Pam Bondi to “release the documents. Redact the names of the victims. Don’t release photographs, naked or otherwise, of minors.”
“This is not going to go away until there is full disclosure,” he observed.
But in fact, even if there is full disclosure, there is no indication that mounting questions about Epstein, Trump and their relationship will ever be fully resolved.
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