Former President Bill Clinton, in his opening statement prepared for his deposition for the House Oversight Committee on Feb. 27 at the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center at Chappaqua Crossing, the former Reader’s Digest site, said that he saw nothing wrong and did nothing wrong during his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Clinton said, “I hope by being here today, we can bring ourselves a little further away from the brink and back to a country where we can disagree with one another civilly – where the search for truth and justice outweighs the partisan urge to score points and create spectacle. I’ll do my part and I hope you’ll do yours.”
Clinton said that he was giving the deposition because the “girls and women whose lives Jeffrey Epstein destroyed deserve not only justice, but healing. They’ve been waiting too long for both.”
Clinton, without mentioning Donald Trump, reminded the committee that “America was built upon the idea that no person is above the law, even Presidents – especially Presidents.”
Clinton in his statement told the committee that he had a brief acquaintance with Epstein that ended “years before his crimes came to light.”
Clinton said that he never witnessed any indication of what was going on and he defended his wife, Hillary, who gave a deposition to the committee on Feb. 26.
You made Hillary come in,” Clinton said. “She had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. Nothing. She has no memory of even meeting him. She neither traveled with him nor visited any of his properties. Whether you subpoenaed 10 people or 10,000, including her was simply not right.”
Clinton commented on photos showing him with Epstein that the committee had been expected to confront him with during the deposition.
“I had no idea of the crimes Epstein was committing,” Clinton said. “No matter how many photos you show me, I have two things that at the end of the day matter more than your interpretation of those 20-year-old photos. I know what I saw, and more importantly, what I didn’t see. I know what I did, and more importantly, what I didn’t do. I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong.
“Even with 20 /20 hindsight, I saw nothing that ever gave me pause. We are only here because he hid it from everyone so well for so long. And by the time it came to light with his 2008 guilty plea, I had long stopped associating with him.
“You’ll often hear me say that I don’t recall. That might be unsatisfying. But I’m not going to say something I’m not sure of. This was all a long time ago. And I am bound by my oath not to speculate, or to guess. This is not merely for my benefit. but because it doesn’t help you for me to play detective 24 years later.
Since I am under oath, I will not falsely state that I am looking forward to your questions. But I am ready to answer them to the best of my abilities, consistent with the facts as I know them: the legitimate, the logical, and even the outlandish.”
