Commission of Inquiry into the Epstein Affair

(Chappaqua) Former head of American diplomacy Hillary Clinton counterattacked Thursday during her hearing on her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein by a commission of inquiry, demanding that Donald Trump be heard on his links with the sex criminal.

“If this commission seriously wanted to know the truth about Epstein’s crimes of sexual exploitation (…) 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.

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

Former Democratic President Bill Clinton, who traveled several times aboard Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet and was photographed numerous times in his company, claimed in 2019 that he had not spoken to him for more than a decade. Hillary Clinton, for her part, said she never met the financier and sex criminal, who died in prison in 2019.

“No one, at this time, is accusing the Clintons of any wrongdoing. They will get due process, but we have a lot of questions, and the goal of the whole investigation is to try to understand many aspects of the Epstein case,” continued Republican James Comer, chairman of the committee.

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

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

In front of the small municipal hall where the discussions are held, the police have erected metal barricades.

In the morning, an elderly couple went to the site with a sign also demanding that Donald Trump be heard.

Hearing paused

Jim Levine, 34, who lives nearby, calls it a “privilege” that the Clintons can depose under oath near their home. “Lock her up, that’s what I say,” he says of the former Secretary of State.

Shortly after it started, the hearing was briefly interrupted due to the distribution of a photo of Hillary Clinton by one of the elected officials present, contrary to the required confidentiality rules.

The hearing is not public, but its recording should subsequently be released, probably on Friday, when Bill Clinton will have in turn been heard.

This is the same group of elected officials 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.

Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, both 79 years old, each had links with Jeffrey Epstein, but claim to have broken up with him well before his death in prison in New York and to have had no knowledge of his sexual crimes.

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 department, 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.