Hillary Clinton used same 9-word response a dozen

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer told reporters that he had “learned a lot” during the group’s six-hour deposition of Hillary Clinton as half of its Jeffrey Epstein probe, but that he estimated “the number of times she said, ‘I don’t know, you’ll have to ask my husband’” at more than a dozen.

Comer called the Thursday deposition “productive,” but said he was in the end dissatisfied with some of the previous secretary of state’s solutions. “It’s a shame that it took 7 months to get Ms. Clinton in,” he told reporters after the deposition. “We’re going to try to get the video out as quickly as possible, hopefully within the next 24 hours.”

The closed-door listening to got here despite repeated calls for from Hillary Clinton herself to make the deposition public, which House Republicans refused to assist. Democratic lawmakers on Thursday shortly called on the Republican majority to release a full, unedited transcript of the interview within 24 hours, citing the continuing’s restricted transparency.

“We are sitting through an incredibly unserious clown show of a deposition where members of Congress and the Republican Party are more concerned about getting their photo opp of Secretary Clinton than actually getting to the truth and holding anyone accountable,” Democratic Rep. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona told reporters on Thursday afternoon.

Former President Bill Clinton will testify on Friday.

Hillary Clinton told members of Congress during the more than six-hour deposition that she had no data of Epstein’s or Ghislaine Maxwell’s crimes.

“I had no idea about their criminal activities. I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein,” Hillary Clinton said in an opening assertion she shared on social media. The closed-door deposition concluded after Hillary Clinton gave an reply to every query, according to The Associated Press.

The depositions in the Clintons’ hometown of Chappaqua, a usually quiet hamlet north of New York City, come after months of tense back-and-forth between the previous high-powered Democratic couple and the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee as it investigates Epstein, who killed himself in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial. It would be the first time that a former president has been pressured to testify before Congress.

Yet the demand for a reckoning over Epstein’s abuse of underage women has turn out to be a near-unstoppable power on Capitol Hill and past.

President Donald Trump, a Republican who has expressed remorse that the Clintons are being pressured to testify, bowed last 12 months to stress to release case recordsdata on Epstein. The Clintons, too, agreed to testify after their provides of sworn statements had been rebuffed by the Oversight panel and its chairman, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., threatened felony contempt of Congress expenses against them.

“Like every decent person,” Hillary Clinton added in her opening assertion, “I have been horrified by what we have learned about their crimes.”

She has beforehand said that her husband flew with Epstein for charitable journeys but that she didn’t recall ever assembly Epstein. She had also interacted with Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend and confidant, at conferences hosted by the Clinton Foundation.

Maxwell also attended the 2010 marriage ceremony of their daughter, Chelsea Clinton.

As she exited the event heart where the deposition was held, Hillary Clinton told reporters that Maxwell had come to the marriage as a visitor of another person and that she had told the committee she only knew Maxwell “as an acquaintance.”

Democrats, now being led by a new technology of politicians, have prioritized transparency around Epstein over defending the previous leaders of their social gathering. Several Democratic lawmakers joined with Republicans on the Oversight panel to advance the contempt of Congress expenses against the Clintons last month. Several said that they had no relationship with the Clintons and owed no loyalty to them.

Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the Oversight panel, also called on Trump to testify in the investigation. He argued that Bill Clinton’s look units a precedent that ought to apply to Trump as effectively.

“Let’s get President Trump in front of our committee to answer the questions that are being asked across this country from survivors,” Garcia said.

Garcia and others are also difficult the Department of Justice’s assertion that it has met the necessities of a law handed by Congress last 12 months that mandates the release of many of the case recordsdata on Epstein.

Senate Democratic chief Chuck Schumer of New York said his caucus in the approaching days would also review unredacted variations of the Epstein case recordsdata at a Department of Justice workplace. Schumer, who demanded that the division release all of the recordsdata and protect all supplies, said they are going to “pull on every thread” until they “reveal this massive cover-up.”