Bill Clinton to face grilling on significant Epstein ties

Former US president Bill Clinton will be grilled by a Congressional panel on Friday on his well-documented links to Jeffrey Epstein, as Democrats seek to shift focus onto Donald Trump’s own ties to the convicted sex offender. Clinton features prominently throughout the latest Epstein files disclosures, with the former president insisting that he broke ties with him well before the disgraced billionaire’s 2008 conviction for sex offenses. Mere mention in the files released by the US Department of Justice does not imply wrongdoing, and Clinton has not been accused of a crime or formally investigated.

He follows his wife, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who testified Thursday, defiantly calling for President Trump — who like Bill Clinton had ties with Epstein — to appear before the panel. “If this committee is serious about learning the truth about Epstein’s trafficking crimes… it would ask (Trump) directly under oath about the tens of thousands of times he shows up in the Epstein files,” she said in an opening statement published online. The depositions are being held behind closed doors even though the Clintons called for them to be open and televised, a move Bill Clinton denounced as akin to a “kangaroo court.” The grilling comes with greater peril for the former president than for his wife, as he has acknowledged extensive interactions with Epstein, but said he never visited the shady financier’s private Caribbean island.

Epstein associated with the world’s rich, famous and powerful, and was convicted in 2008 for soliciting sex from girls as young as 14. He died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while facing trial on sex trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide.

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The Republican-led House Oversight Committee is probing those who were linked to Epstein, particularly in light of the Justice Department’s disclosures of millions of new documents related to its investigation of him. Hillary insisted that she had neither flown on Epstein’s plane nor visited his island.

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