Commission of Inquiry into the Epstein Affair

(Chappaqua) Former US President Bill Clinton will explain Friday before a parliamentary commission of inquiry about his numerous and documented links with Jeffrey Epstein, at a time when Democrats are trying to put the spotlight on the relationship between Donald Trump and the sex criminal.

The Republican chairman of the parliamentary commission of inquiry into the Epstein affair said on Friday that he had “a lot of questions” to ask Mr. Clinton, just before the latter’s hearing.

“It took us seven months to bring in the Clintons. But we finally have them and we look forward to asking them lots of questions,” James Comer told the press, the day after Hillary Clinton’s first hearing.

As with the current Republican president, also aged 79, the name of the Democrat who held the office between 1993 and 2001 appears multiple times in the file, without any reprehensible act having ever been attributed to him.

Because just like Donald Trump, Bill Clinton was close to the New York financier, traveling several times aboard his private jet, and having been photographed numerous times in his company.

In images recently made public by the courts, we see him participating in social events, but also in private settings, sometimes alongside women whose faces were hidden before publication. In one photo he is in a hot tub.

On several occasions, Bill Clinton assured that he knew nothing of the crimes of the financier, who had pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from a minor and served an 18-month prison sentence.

The year Jeffrey Epstein died in prison in 2019, the ex-president said he had not spoken to him in more than a decade.

A line of defense recalled Thursday by his wife, Hillary Clinton, before the same commission.

According to her, “the vast majority of people who had contact with him before his confession of guilt in 2008 (…) did not know what he was doing”.

Like his wife, the former head of state will be heard in a municipal hall in the small, wealthy town of Chappaqua, north of New York, where the couple owns a house.

Dozens of journalists and media technicians took place at dawn in front of the building.

In an adjoining parking lot, three women, from neighboring towns, brandish signs hostile to Donald Trump.

“Bill Clinton left office decades ago (…) It should be Donald Trump and Melania Trump who are heard,” says one of them, who prefers to withhold her name for fear of reprisals from residents favorable to the president.

“Very serious facts”

Hillary Clinton repeated Thursday that she had never met Jeffrey Epstein and was pugnacious in front of the members of the Republican-majority commission.

“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.

The elected Democrats within the commission also called for a hearing with the current American president, based on new revelations from the press.

According to them, the Department of Justice recently prevented the publication of documents relaying the accusations of a woman claiming to have been sexually assaulted when she was a minor by Jeffrey Epstein and by Donald Trump.

“These are documents which accuse the President of the United States of very serious acts of sexual violence,” insisted California elected official Robert Garcia.

The testimony of the Clintons ends months of battle with the Republican head of the commission of inquiry, James Comer.

Initially summoned in October, Bill and Hillary Clinton refused to appear.

Threatened by the commission with prosecution for obstructing Congress, the couple finally announced at the end of January that they agreed to be heard.

Both demanded public hearings in vain, saying they wanted to avoid their comments being used by the Republicans.

If the hearing is not public, its recording should nevertheless be released at its conclusion.

Since the publication on January 30 of a new round of documents, several leaders and personalities from around the world have been splashed for their past links with Jeffrey Epstein, provoking criminal investigations, arrests and resignations, mainly in Europe.