Clintons poised for explosive Epstein deposition

Washington: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is testifying before US House lawmakers in New York on Thursday as part of a congressional investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, starting off two days of depositions that will also include former President Bill Clinton.

The closed-door depositions in the Clintons’ hometown of Chappaqua, a typically quiet hamlet north of New York City, come after months of tense back-and-forth between the former high-powered Democratic couple and the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee. It will be the first time that a former president has been forced to testify before Congress.

Yet the demand for a reckoning over Epstein’s abuse of underage girls has become a near-unstoppable force on Capitol Hill and beyond.

President Donald Trump, a Republican who has expressed regret that the Clintons are being forced to testify, bowed last year to pressure to release case files on Epstein, who killed himself in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial.

The Clintons, too, agreed to testify after their offers of sworn statements were rebuffed by the Oversight panel and its chairman, Rep James Comer, R-Ky, threatened criminal contempt of Congress charges against them.

“We have a very clear record that we’ve been willing to talk about,” Hillary Clinton said in an interview with the BBC earlier this month.

She added that her husband had flown with Epstein for charitable trips and that she did not recall meeting Epstein but had interacted with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend and confidant, at conferences hosted by the Clinton Foundation.

“We are more than happy to say what we know, which is very limited.”