The House Oversight Committee released hours of sworn deposition footage last week showing Bill and Hillary Clinton under oath and under pressure, answering questions about their ties to Jeffrey Epstein. The videos are as revealing for what the Clintons said as for how they said it.
Hillary Clinton pounded the table with her fist and started to leave after Rep. Lauren Boebert snapped an unsanctioned photo of her. Bill Clinton, 79, sat through his own session with his hands trembling throughout. The depositions took place at the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center, a venue the Clintons selected after initially refusing to testify at all, the NY Post reported.
That refusal matters. Back in August, the Oversight panel subpoenaed the Clintons and eight others for testimony about Epstein. The Clintons balked, accusing Chairman James Comer of "trying to punish those who you see as your enemies." It took several Democrats joining Republicans in advancing a contempt of Congress measure before they finally caved.
So much for transparency from the party that spent years demanding it from everyone else.
The 4-hour and 35-minute video captures a former secretary of state toggling between righteous indignation and flat refusal to engage. When she discovered Boebert had taken a photo, she erupted:
"I am done with this if you guys are doing this, I'm done."
"You can hold me in contempt from now until the cows come home."
She ultimately returned. But the tone was set.
When Boebert raised the Epstein files and referenced "Pizzagate," Hillary dismissed the entire line of questioning, calling the conspiracy theory "totally made up" and noting it "caused a deranged young man to show up with an assault rifle and shoot up a local pizzeria."
Rep. Nancy Mace then needled Clinton with an Epstein file email showing that now-Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had invited Epstein to a Clinton campaign fundraiser in 2015. Hillary pivoted to Lutnick's connection to September 11 and the loss of 3,000 lives at the World Trade Center. When Mace tried to cut her off, Hillary fired back:
"You asked the question, I'm going to answer the question."
It was a deft redirect. But the question wasn't about September 11. It was about why Jeffrey Epstein kept showing up in Clinton's orbit.
Hillary was also pressed on why Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's accomplice, attended Chelsea Clinton's 2010 wedding. Her explanation: Maxwell was a "guest of someone who was invited." That's the kind of answer that is technically responsive while being functionally useless. Someone brought a sex trafficker's closest associate to a former president's daughter's wedding, and Hillary apparently never thought to ask who or why.
When Mace, a survivor of sexual abuse, pressed harder, Hillary offered a rare moment of genuine engagement:
"I am very sympathetic to your personal situation. I have read about it, I have seen you testify or speak on the floor about it, and I am very much sympathetic with not only what you went through, but appreciate your standing up for survivors."
It was the one moment where Clinton seemed to engage as a person rather than a litigant.
Where Hillary was combative, Bill was careful. Where she pounded tables, he chose his words slowly, his hands visibly shaking through the 4-hour and 33-minute session.
He acknowledged flying on Epstein's aircraft multiple times:
"I took one flight back from Florida to New York and all or part of several other — I think four or five — trips to Africa, Asia and one to Northern Europe."
He confirmed Epstein visited the Clinton Foundation's Harlem office at least once and that he himself "paid a brief visit" to Epstein's house. He described encounters with Epstein and Maxwell as occurring "usually only on the trips."
Then there was the hot tub photo from Brunei. Clinton explained that the Sultan of Brunei had invited him to stay at a hotel. His account placed his AIDS foundation team, Epstein, and Maxwell all at the scene. His recollection of the photo itself: "I had forgotten that there was anybody in the hot tub."
He also read aloud a note he had submitted to Maxwell for inclusion in a 50th birthday book for Epstein. His assessment: "Not a bad letter." He added that he "thought Epstein was interesting and curious, so I wrote a letter that I thought reflected that."
Interesting and curious. Remarkable adjectives for a man now universally acknowledged as a prolific sex predator.
When asked directly about Epstein's crimes, Clinton was unequivocal: "Absolutely not. I knew nothing about that." He also leaned on his age, telling the committee he would turn 80 on his next birthday:
"I have to be honest with you, you know, I'll be 80 years old if I live to my next birthday — I don't remember everything that happened 24 years ago."
Selective memory is a bipartisan affliction in Washington, but few have practiced it with such polish. This is a man who survived impeachment by parsing the meaning of the word "is." The muscle memory is still there, even if the hands aren't steady.
To his credit, he did offer something neither his lawyers nor his wife would likely have scripted:
"I do think you should be talking to me. I think you should have called me. I did take those plane trips with him and you have a right to ask those questions."
That's either genuine candor or the most calculated display of openness in deposition history.
While the Clintons testified, Democrats were already working the hallway. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the Oversight panel, spoke to reporters during Hillary's deposition and made his party's play explicit:
"This committee has now set a new precedent about talking to presidents and former presidents. We're demanding immediately that we ask President Trump to testify in front of our committee and be deposed in front of Oversight Republicans and Democrats."
The strategy is transparent. Democrats didn't fight these depositions because they believed the Clintons had nothing to answer for. They fought them, lost, and are now trying to weaponize the precedent. The concern was never accountability. It was leverage.
President Trump responded directly, saying he likes Bill Clinton and doesn't enjoy seeing him deposed, then adding: "But they certainly went after me a lot more than that."
The depositions contain no explosive confession. Nobody expected one. What the footage reveals is subtler and, in some ways, more damning:
For decades, the Clintons operated inside a force field of institutional protection. Media outlets looked away. Political allies circled the wagons. Legal consequences never quite arrived. The deposition footage doesn't shatter that force field, but it puts cracks in it, so the public can finally see for themselves.
Bill Clinton's hands were shaking. That much, at least, was honest.