Former Secretary of State and former US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton testified behind closed doors Thursday before a congressional committee investigating New York child molester Jeffrey Epstein. She demanded that Donald Trump testify "under oath" and then told the press that her husband Bill Clinton knew nothing of Jeffrey Epstein's crimes.

Published on: 02/26/2026 - 09:33 Modified on: 02/27/2026 - 10:27

Hillary Clinton strikes back. The former US presidential candidate and wife of former President Bill Clinton, testified Thursday, February 26, behind closed doors before a parliamentary committee on the couple's past links with sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, who was close to her husband. She demanded that Donald Trump be heard on his links with the sex criminal.

At the end of the hearing, she repeated to the press what she has always said about herself: she never met Jeffrey Epstein. As for her husband Bill Clinton, who maintained a close relationship with the financier who died in 2019, she said she was certain that he knew nothing of his crimes.

“If this commission seriously wanted to know the truth about Epstein's sexual exploitation crimes (...) it would directly ask our current president to explain under oath the tens of thousands of times he appears in the file,” she said in an opening statement that she shared on X.

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Members of this committee from the Republican-majority House of Representatives traveled to Chappaqua, a small, wealthy town north of New York where the Clintons have a house. The former Secretary of State was heard before her husband who will speak on Friday.

Commission has 'many questions' for Bill Clinton

Former Democratic President Bill Clinton traveled several times aboard Jeffrey Epstein's private jet and was photographed numerous times in his company. “We have many questions for her husband,” concluded Republican James Comer, chairman of the commission, in the evening, who noted that Hillary Clinton had responded “a dozen” times that certain questions should rather be asked of him.

In front of the press, the former American Secretary of State, however, also repeated her husband's line of defense ahead of his hearing the next day. Bill Clinton, she said, "ended" his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein "several years before anything about his criminal activities came to light."

It was in 2008 that the New York financier pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor and served an 18-month prison sentence. “The vast majority of people who had contact with him before his confession of guilt in 2008 (...) did not know what he was doing,” insisted Hillary Clinton.

Also read: Epstein affair: what we know about the disturbing attempts at rapprochement with the Kremlin

The Democrats on the commission, for their part, seized on a new element of the affair that is embarrassing for President Donald Trump. According to several media, the Department of Justice has in fact prevented the publication of documents related to the accusations of a woman claiming to have been sexually assaulted when she was a minor by Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump.

“We demand that President Trump be summoned immediately”

“These are documents that accuse the President of the United States of very serious acts of sexual violence,” insisted California Representative Robert Garcia. “We demand that President Trump be summoned immediately to testify before our committee.”

Shortly after it started, the hearing was briefly interrupted due to the distribution of a photo of Hillary Clinton by one of the Republican elected officials present, contrary to the confidentiality rules in force. The hearing is not public, but its recording should subsequently be released, probably at the end of Friday, when Bill Clinton will in turn have been heard.

This is the same group of parliamentarians who heard Jeffrey Epstein's accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, on February 9 by videoconference from prison where she is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sexual exploitation.

The US Department of Justice published "more than three million pages" in part redacted on January 30, affirming that the Trump administration had thus fulfilled its obligation to shed light on this explosive case. These millions of documents do not contain elements that could lead to additional prosecutions by the American justice system, the number 2 of the ministry, Todd Blanche, immediately warned.

But since their publication, leaders and personalities around the world have been splashed for their past links with Jeffrey Epstein, provoking criminal investigations, arrests and resignations in succession, mainly in Europe.

Initially summoned in October, Bill and Hillary Clinton refused to appear. But threatened by the commission with prosecution for obstructing Congress, the couple finally announced at the end of January that they agreed to be heard.

With AFP

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