Hillary Clinton told the BBC on Monday that she and Bill Clinton have "no links" to Jeffrey Epstein. Seconds later, she acknowledged that her husband "took some rides" on Epstein's airplane. Both statements came from the same interview, conducted in Berlin at the annual World Forum.
The former Secretary of State is scheduled to sit for a filmed deposition before the House Oversight Committee on February 26. Bill Clinton follows the next day. The couple agreed to appear only after the committee voted on a bipartisan basis to recommend holding both of them in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with duly issued subpoenas.
So much for having "nothing to hide."
Clinton's interview was an exercise in careful word selection that collapsed under its own weight. She opened with a flat denial:
We have a very clear record we're willing to talk about. My husband has said he took some rides on [Epstein's] airplane for his charitable work.
Flight logs from 2002 and 2003 document Bill Clinton traveling with Epstein to Bangkok, Brunei, Rwanda, Russia, and China. Released photos show the former president in a swimming pool with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell and a woman whose face was redacted. Another image shows him standing and smiling with Epstein himself.
According to the Daily Mail, Hillary Clinton said she doesn't recall ever meeting Epstein and had met Maxwell only "on a few occasions." She waved off Maxwell's attendance at Clinton Foundation events:
…thousands of people go to the Clinton Global Initiatives, so to me it's not something that is really at the heart of what this matter is about.
When you're explaining why a convicted sex trafficker showed up at your events, you've already lost the framing battle.
Rather than address the documentary record — over three million documents, photos, and videos released by the Justice Department — Clinton pivoted to offense. She accused the Trump administration of orchestrating a "cover-up" and demanded the files be released faster:
Get the files out. They are slow-walking it.
She also called for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Duke of York stripped of his titles by the King last year, to testify before Congress about his connections to Epstein. And she cast the entire investigation as a political stunt:
Look at this shiny object. We're going to have the Clintons, even Hillary Clinton, who never met the guy.
This is the Clinton playbook distilled to its essence. Deny. Minimize. Redirect. When confronted with photographic evidence linking your husband to a convicted sex offender and his accomplice, accuse someone else of a cover-up and demand the spotlight move elsewhere.
Bill Clinton, for his part, denied any knowledge of Epstein's crimes and accused the Trump administration of attempting to "shield themselves from what comes next, or from what they'll try and hide forever." President Trump told reporters Monday evening that he had been "totally exonerated."
The Clintons' willingness to testify deserves context. They did not volunteer. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), issued subpoenas. The Clintons defied them, then the committee voted — with bipartisan support — to recommend contempt of Congress.
Only then did the Clintons agree to sit for depositions. Hillary Clinton added a condition:
We will show up but we think it would be better to have it in public.
The committee ordered closed-door, transcribed, filmed depositions. The Clintons wanted cameras and an audience — the conditions most favorable to a political performance, least favorable to detailed questioning under oath. That preference tells you everything about whether this is about transparency or stage management.
Strip away the rhetoric, and here is what's documented: Bill Clinton flew on Jeffrey Epstein's plane repeatedly in the early 2000s, visiting multiple countries. He appears in photographs with both Epstein and Maxwell. His name appears in flight logs. Hillary Clinton met Maxwell on multiple occasions. Maxwell attended Clinton Foundation events.
Hillary Clinton characterized all of this as "very limited and totally unrelated" to Epstein's crimes:
They... were both convicted of horrific crimes against girls and women. That should be the focus. We are more than happy to say what we know, which is very limited and totally unrelated to their... crimes.
Perhaps. That's what depositions are for — to test claims under oath, not in friendly BBC interviews from Berlin. The Clintons will have that opportunity on February 26 and 27.
The Epstein case has always been about the gap between what powerful people knew and what they did about it. Over three million documents have now been released. The Justice Department says it has no more files to produce, though lawmakers have criticized the department for withholding internal government memos, notes, and emails.
Hillary Clinton wants this story to be about a Trump administration cover-up. She wants Prince Andrew in the witness chair. She wants the public focused on anyone other than the couple that defied congressional subpoenas, appeared in photos with a convicted sex trafficker, and logged flights with a man who died in federal custody in 2019 under circumstances that remain a source of deep public skepticism.
You can claim "no links" to Jeffrey Epstein. But when the flight logs have your husband's name, the photos show him poolside with Ghislaine Maxwell, and Congress had to threaten contempt just to get you in the room — the record speaks louder than the denial.
