Hillary Clinton has told US legislators she had no knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s or Ghislaine Maxwell’s crimes, at the start of two days of depositions that will also include former president Bill Clinton.
“I had no idea about their criminal activities. I do not recall ever encountering Mr Epstein,” the former US secretary of state and ex-first lady said in an opening statement she shared on social media.
The closed-door depositions to legislators from the House of Representatives, being held in the Clintons’ home town of Chappaqua in upstate New York, come after months of tense back-and-forth between the former high-powered Democratic couple and the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee.
Here is my opening statement to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee today. pic.twitter.com/NZSF2epcI5
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 26, 2026
It will be the first time that a former president has been forced to give evidence before Congress.
The demand for a reckoning over Epstein’s abuse of under-age 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 give evidence, 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 agreed to give evidence after their offers of sworn statements were rebuffed by the Oversight panel and its chairman James Comer threatened criminal contempt of Congress charges against them.