Hillary Clinton testifies she has no information on Epstein’s crimes

For­mer Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton told U.S. House law­mak­ers on Thurs­day that she had no knowl­edge of Jef­frey Ep­stein’s or Ghis­laine Maxwell’s crimes at the start of two days of de­po­si­tions that will al­so in­clude for­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton.

“I had no idea about their crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties. I do not re­call ever en­coun­ter­ing Mr. Ep­stein,” Hillary Clin­ton said in an open­ing state­ment she shared on so­cial me­dia.

The closed-door de­po­si­tions come af­ter months of tense back-and-forth be­tween the for­mer high-pow­ered De­mo­c­ra­t­ic cou­ple and the Re­pub­li­can-con­trolled House Over­sight Com­mit­tee.

The Clin­tons agreed to tes­ti­fy af­ter their of­fers of sworn state­ments were re­buffed by the Over­sight pan­el and its chair­man, Rep. James Com­er, R-Ky., threat­ened crim­i­nal con­tempt of Con­gress charges against them.

It will be the first time that a for­mer pres­i­dent has been forced to tes­ti­fy be­fore Con­gress — the lat­est sign that the de­mand for a reck­on­ing over Ep­stein’s abuse of un­der­age girls has be­come a near-un­stop­pable force on Capi­tol Hill and be­yond