What Bill Clinton Said About Donald Trump’s Epstein Ties During Deposition

President Donald Trump never previously gave indications he had been involved with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, former President Bill Clinton told lawmakers during a deposition Friday.

Representative James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, told reporters during a break in the closed-door deposition in New York before the committee that Clinton demurred when asked whether Trump should also be called to testify in the ongoing Epstein investigation.

"And President Clinton said, 'That's for you to decide,'" Comer recalled Friday. "And the president went on to say that [Trump] has never said anything to me to make me think he was involved. And he meant with Epstein."

Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at President Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20, 2025. | Photo by Melina Mara - Pool/Getty Images

Comer, a Kentucky Republican, found Clinton's response "interesting," he said.

"I know there's a lot of obsession about President Trump from the media, a lot of curiosity about President Trump from the media," Comer told reporters.

Representative Robert Garcia, a Democrat from California, later told reporters that Comer had mischaracterized Clinton's answer regarding Trump during the deposition.

"I think the best response to that would be to view the complete record of what actually he said," Garcia told reporters. "We're not going to disclose what was said because that's not in the rules. The Republicans keep breaking the rules."

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Garcia said Clinton did mention "additional information" about his discussions with Trump, but insisted Comer's description wasn't accurate.

Photos of former President Bill Clinton and others included in the DOJ's release of the Epstein files. | Mandel NGAN / AFP via Getty Images

"Let's release the full transcript, so you can all get a full record of what was actually said, which brings up some very important new questions about comments President Trump has actually said in the past," Garcia said.

Friday's deposition of Clinton, 79, marks the first time a former president has been compelled to testify before Congress. The Democrat denied any wrongdoing in his relationship with Epstein and said he didn't see indications of sexual abuse.

"First, I had no idea of the crimes Epstein was committing," Clinton said in a statement. "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."

President Donald Trump, accompanied by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, speaks to reporters before departing on Marine One from the South... | AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Clinton has previously acknowledged he and Epstein had a yearslong relationship, but maintains he didn't have any contact with the financier after he was accused of sex crimes. Epstein also donated $20,000 to the Democratic National Committee in October 1996 about a month before Clinton's reelection and later visited the president in the White House multiple times in the 1990s, visitor logs show.

In a video statement released on X after his deposition on Friday, Clinton reiterated that he did not see "any indication with what was truly going on" amid his interactions with Epstein. He added that he did tell the committee what he did know "in the hopes that it would help prevent anything like this from ever happening again."

Several photos of Clinton have surfaced in the Department of Justice's release of case files on Epstein, including several with women whose faces were redacted.

Clinton, who testified for several hours on Friday, appeared before Congress a day after his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, told lawmakers she didn't recall ever meeting Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.

"I don't know how many times I had to say I did not know Jeffrey Epstein," Hillary Clinton told reporters after Thursday's six-hour deposition. "I never went to his island. I never went to his homes. I never went to his offices. So, it's on the record numerous times."

Bill Clinton also defended his wife in his statement released ahead of Friday's session with lawmakers.

"Before we start, I have to get personal,” the former president said. "You made Hillary come in. 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 testified Friday that Trump told him in the early 2000s during a golf tournament that he had a falling out with Epstein over a land deal, three sources close to the matter told CNN. Trump said he was no longer friends with Epstein, Clinton recalled.

Clinton also denied having sex with any of the women depicted alongside him in photographs in the Epstein files, two sources with knowledge of his testimony told CNN.