Why are Bill and Hillary Clinton testifying over Epstein?

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0:38OK, I've just sat down in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London, and I was in the newsroom before chatting to people because loads of journalists here have been looking at the Epstein files and particularly have been discussing the British connections to those files. So to do with the Royals and also Peter Mandelson. What are people saying in the US, Anthony? Maybe a little less about the British connection, but names like Bill Gates and Elon Musk, for instance, have been coming up because of their ties and evidence within these latest batch that they had connections to Jeffrey Epstein.

1:11That has been a water cooler chat around here. And we've also learned just in the past few days that a former president is going to be in front of a congressional panel for the first time since Gerald Ford testified to Congress way back in 1983. That's Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who do have their own history with Donald Trump. They will testify under oath at the end of February on the Epstein matter before a congressional committee. Three and a half million documents have been released, but have thrown up really as many questions as they have answers.

1:46And people are still looking for more and more information. So could the Clintons shed light on the full extent of Jeffrey Epstein's network and his abuse and anybody else who was involved? Welcome to AmeriCast.

2:27Hello, it's Sarah here in the BBC's Bureau in Washington. And it's Anthony right next to Sarah here in Washington, D.C. And it is Mariana in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London. Guys, we talked quite a bit on Monday about the Epstein files, as everybody has been doing for the last few days. But there is, as ever, more to say, because there actually have been some developments since our last episode that we want to talk about. And let's start with the fact that after a long drawn-out argument, Bill and Hillary Clinton have now agreed to testify in the congressional investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.

3:01Yeah, circle your calendars. This is going to be high drama, although I'm not sure if it's going to be live or they're going to show up behind scenes. It's going to be recorded and then we'll get snippets of it afterwards. But there is a relationship between Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein. Clinton denies any kind of knowledge of Epstein's crimes, but there were a bunch of photographs in the Epstein files that have come out over the past few months showing Bill Clinton on trips with Jeffrey Epstein, interacting with Jeffrey Epstein at various places. It is his state on flight, it's in flight logs, et cetera, et cetera.

3:37Hillary Clinton, who is also being forced to testify here, there's really not much of a relationship between her and Jeffrey Epstein. Oh, she says none at all. Yeah, not at all. So, I mean, I'm not sure why she's there, except for the fact that Republicans, you know, love to love to grill Hillary Clinton. She's kind of still a villain in their eyes. So might as well get her up there and put the screws to her as well. And the committee has been asking them to testify for quite a long time and they had refused and their lawyer had sent a letter saying, look, everything that they've got to say about Jeffrey Epstein is already on the record.

4:09They've got nothing to add to your investigation in any way. And we're saying that they were refusing to turn up to testify. but then they've changed their minds. Yeah, we were just maybe a few hours away from contempt of Congress, uh, finding by this committee and then a vote in the House of Representatives. Uh, if you'll remember the House of Representatives found people like Steve Bannon, uh, in contempt of Congress, uh, during the Biden administration and Bannon actually went to prison, uh, for that for a little while. So it's, it's not something you can just shrug off. It all kind of It depends on the allocation of power in Washington, whether there's a Justice Department that wants to pursue a criminal case.

4:47But in that case, with the Biden administration, they did. In this case, with the Trump administration, I wouldn't be surprised if they would have pursued prosecution of Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, if they had been held in contempt. So you can understand why when push came to shove, they they relented and they're going to show up and testify. And I think they hope that maybe this sets a precedent for this investigation, where when the Democrats control Congress and maybe they want to talk to someone like Donald Trump, there will be grounds for Trump showing up and being forced to testify as well.

5:20Yeah, I was going to say, because it's one thing someone like Steve Bannon, former White House advisor, refusing to give evidence and being sent to jail for it. A former president of the United States, a former secretary of state, a former first lady, that's got to be a bit different, hasn't it? Yeah, you would think so. I mean, this is it doesn't get much more prestigious than that. There are also issues of presidential prerogative protections that presidents have, although obviously this a lot of this happened after Bill Clinton was left office. So it's a personal type of inquiry rather than an inquiry into Clinton's duties while he was president.

5:57But the same would go for Donald Trump. And in theory, Trump could be pressed to testify and maybe he'll refuse. I mean, he certainly has refused those sorts of things before. But there is a possibility that if he breaks with this precedent, which the Clintons actually said, we hope this sets a precedent for future investigations of Trump or someone else in Republican circles who have been tied to this decides not to testify, maybe they're going to be facing some sort of a criminal case. Marianna, my heart sinks at the idea that this might still be going on. And President Trump, former President Trump in like 2029, is being asked to testify in front of a Democrat held Congress about the Epstein files.

6:38But it's far from impossible that we might still be talking about them then. One of the things I think that's quite interesting here is obviously Hillary Clinton herself has been subjected to a whole range of very extreme conspiracy theories. People might remember Pizzagate from back in 2016 when she ran to be president. And you could see to some extent why maybe they think, right, let's just get her to testify because actually she's not involved with this. And so this is a chance for her to kind of clear her name. But the flip side is that whatever she says will be hyper scrutinized by people on social media.

7:12And, you know, when I talk about conspiracy theories, I'm talking about stuff not like the Epstein files where there's huge amounts of evidence to back up various allegations. but instead where there's completely unfounded ideas. And you just wonder whether this could also backfire. Yeah, to remind our listeners, Pizzagate was that conspiracy theory that arose in 2016 out of one of Hillary Clinton's campaign advisors, John Podesta's leaked emails where he talked about having a meeting at a pizza parlor here in Washington, DC. And the conspiracists looked at that and thought this was all code about some sort of child pedophilia ring in the basement of this pizza parlor.

7:50It turns out the pizza parlor didn't even have a basement. But someone showed up with a gun at that pizza place and threatened to shoot it up because of these conspiracy theories. So, you know, on one hand, this all happens online in a kind of overheated world. On the other hand, there are very real implications for this when people decide to take things into their own hands. Well, and also, I mean, without wanting to sound too kind of out there, Whilst that was absolute nonsense that there was this worldwide child sex trafficking ring with important, rich, influential, famous people involved.

8:24And it was not true about Hillary Clinton and John Podesta. The whole Epstein story is not a million miles away from that. Yeah, exactly. You don't have to invent one that doesn't actually exist. I think there's loads of memes, AmeriCasters might have seen them popping up, basically saying like, what a week to be a quote unquote conspiracy theorist, like all the conspiracy theories come true. And I think it's worth saying that there are so many conspiracy theories built around this idea of powerful people doing bad things, but especially around sort of sexual abuse or paedophilia. And yeah, the problem is, as we highlight, quite a lot of those have been very extreme and very detached from reality.

9:00This is a real example of where powerful people are accused of doing very bad things and abuse and abusing their positions of power, etc. And so I think it really highlights how there's often a grain of truth to the more extreme ideas that come out, but also how it's really important that we don't dismiss things as conspiracy theories straight away and that we actually try to, as is the case here, access the evidence that's available and assess that and figure out what is going on. And I think that quite a lot of the MAGA accounts have been quite vocal with saying, look, we said that we said this was the case, but some of them weren't quite saying this was the case.

9:39They were saying, you know, Pizzagate was the case, for example. And what we're talking about here is is Gilklin's connection to Jeffrey Epstein and not Pizzagate or any of these other conspiracy theories. These are ones that center around a very real, as you say, criminality on the part of Jeffrey Epstein. Although I will add that for all of the documents that we've seen and all of the kind of seedy connections that people in influence and power have to Jeffrey Epstein and their emails about Jeffrey Epstein suggesting, you know, women that these people could meet and and arranging dates and that sort of thing.

10:14None of it is evidence of criminality for these rich and powerful people. It just all is icky and in theory could have something criminal behind it. But no concrete evidence here. I will say Hillary Clinton has been very good at public testimony. If you remember the investigation of the Benghazi attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya, where she was tied to that. And there were accusations that she somehow was covering up mismanagement. She sat there for hours and hours and hours and answered all of the questions and did so in a way that that did not expand or implicate her. Although I will also go on to note that that was the the genesis of the Hillary Clinton email server story, because she did mention at some point that she had a private email server and that led in an entirely different direction.

11:05So, again, there are risks to be to be had here, even ones that may not be immediately obvious. Interesting as well, I thought, when the House of Representatives was voting about whether or not hold them in contempt if they didn't turn up for testimony, there was what, nine Democrats voted essentially not in favor of the Clintons and much younger ones as well. People who clearly don't think the party owes any loyalty to this couple anymore. Yeah, it certainly seems to be that way. And yeah, I mean, that's, you know, these are people who were kids or young when when Bill Clinton was president. So now he seems almost kind of like an artifact of a different time.

11:43Well, or an embarrassment. I mean, I think the pair of them come with as much scandal between them as they do achievements that I think quite a lot of the party wish they would shut up and go away. Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. So I believe what February? Well, when is later in February is the testimony or early March is scheduled. And that's going to be a big twist in this, but it's not going to be the last one. And it's worth saying that we're focusing a lot on the Clintons here because of this kind of decision to give testimony. But there are a huge number of people who are mentioned in these files or connected to Epstein or linked with him in some way.

12:19And it goes way, way, way beyond political divides. I mean, we've got people like Bill Gates, we've got Elon Musk, and we chatted a bit about his emails before. We've got Peter Thiel, Steve Bannon, Larry Summers, who is the Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton and in charge at Harvard University as well. Howard Lutnick, who's the current Secretary of Commerce. And obviously also Donald Trump has found his name mentioned quite a few times in the files. Again, all of these people say that there's no wrongdoing, etc. etc. But what do we think about the testimony or questions for these individuals?

12:52Are they just going to, is that the end of it? I can't imagine that it's the end of it. The Justice Department has said they've released all the files that they're going to, or at least a vast majority of the files. But we haven't gone through, and other media outlets have not gone through all 3 million. There are still things that could pop up. But once we finish going through all of this, the questions will remain. There's still things that the members of Congress who passed the legislation to force this release say haven't shown up in any of these documents, things like original police reports in Palm Beach County and the original charging document for Jeffrey Epstein prior to the plea deal he struck in the early 2000s, and other lists of possible co-conspirators that might have been compiled.

13:39All that stuff hasn't shown up yet. So maybe those could ultimately be revealed and there's going to be pressure from these politicians as well as the victims and other interested parties to try to get those things finally revealed. So we've had this massive flood of information. It seems like there have been some consequences for people in positions of power, but not the ones that here in the United States we were really keeping an eye on, and that's mostly Donald Trump. Because there's almost no evidence of any real serious investigation into Jeffrey Epstein or whether any of the people in his orbit were also abusing his victims and the girls and the women that he's accused of having sexually trafficked.

14:22Because what the connections are between all these other rich and powerful people that we mentioned, there are emails between them about visiting his homes and borrowing money, about introductions to other rich and powerful people, You know, showing how close he was socially and how indebted these people were to him in many ways, but almost no detail about the sex crimes that were going on or anybody's investigation into them. So either that's been withheld, which, of course, is what some people believe to contain political embarrassment, or at no point did anybody seriously conduct any investigation into Jeffrey Epstein or what was going on around him.

15:00There was a line from Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, in his presentation announcement of this file release when pressed by reporters. And he said it's not a crime to party with Jeffrey Epstein. And that is true. As you said, Mariana, there there's evidence of people wanting to party with Jeffrey Epstein. There is evidence of people taking gifts from Jeffrey Epstein, and there's evidence of Jeffrey Epstein introducing influential, powerful people to women of questionable ages. None of that, it seems, is evidence at the moment of a crime. But back in the day, you know, that would that would be enough to at least lead to serious repercussions.

15:45I'm thinking about Elon Musk talking about when the wildest party is on Epstein's island in that email. He's kind of shrugged that off and defended himself. But that's the kind of thing that could that would have maybe in a different time proved politically, socially catastrophic for these people. Does it depend on what position you're in, though? because a lot of people have made the comment, including us, that it's Brits who've paid the price, the heaviest price it seems to be, in former Prince Andrew and Peter Mandelson. But when you're talking about politicians and royalty, we hold them to a rather different standard, don't we?

16:22And you can, someone like Bill Gates, Rila Mosk, who essentially own their own companies. Larry Summers, in a public position with Harvard University and that kind of thing, a former politician essentially, he's pretty much been cancelled, hasn't he? And we won't see him in public life again. Whereas if you are, you know, rich on your own account and don't have anybody you have to answer to, then who's going to do the cancelling? Right. And Bill Clinton's been out of politics for decades. So, you know, there's really not much left to cancel him. But yeah, so I suppose maybe you're insulated a bit more.

16:56Marianna, what do you think? Yeah, I kind of I think the thing that's quite interesting is if I think it reflects the kind of polarized social media environment quite a lot, because people who don't like, for example, Elon Musk are using the emails about him using the email correspondence that he had with Epstein, where he's kind of trying to be invited to a party to really have a go at him and say he's a hypocrite. particularly because Elon Musk has been so vocal about there being sort of, you know, criminal proceedings and the files being released and everything else. People who really like Elon Musk are saying, look, this proves that he didn't go to the island and therefore you can't have a go at him.

17:35I think the question remains, how much does this impact the kind of like, like Gabriella, like the average voter who's not that into politics and not consuming all of the files in the way that maybe we are, But it's seeing some of these memes or videos or allegations pop up on their feed sort of every now and then. And I think that there is a chance that quite a lot of these people are just like further sort of tarred with the brush of, well, powerful people don't care about us. and they abuse their positions of power, even if that is or isn't the case, whatever. And therefore I'm just feeling quite disillusioned by politics, which probably ultimately might not be very good for Donald Trump, but then it depends if there's that cut through really with the average person.

18:20I would say there are a huge amount of memes and it's a kind of unprecedented situation to have this number of files and documentation that have been released into the public domain and that social media users and sleuths and whoever else can just pour over and pull out what they want. Like we've never really seen anything like it. And so sometimes it feels like there's quite a gap actually between how the media are covering and talking about it and then what you're seeing online. So put aside all of the conspiracy theories. What is Donald Trump's base saying about this? I mean, are they still up in arms?

18:53Yeah, a lot of them, I think, feel that sort of we have indicated thing. There are lots of really big MAGA accounts that have been saying, look, we've been, you know, we've been calling for the release of these files. We're really happy they've been released. And then I'd say there's sort of a split really between the people who say, look, this proves all the powerful people that I don't like are somehow connected to this. And often that's people who they politically disagree with. So that section of the MAGA base have stayed sort of fairly loyal to Donald Trump. But then there's the kind of Marjorie Taylor Greene section, which are the people who were very frustrated at Donald Trump, the perception that he was not releasing the files, that he didn't want to, and who have kind of used it to further speculate about there being, like you mentioned, Sarah, sort of omissions or details haven't been included or we need more information or we need to know what's going on.

19:40And then there are also people who say, look, this means that all of the stuff that you branded conspiracy theories aren't conspiracy theories and so on and so forth. The focus has been much more so on people like Bill Gates and people like Bill Clinton or just people that they just don't like very much. Donald Trump's obviously quite frustrated by this, that having finally released all of this stuff, he's still being asked questions about it. And he was asked on Tuesday, yesterday, in the Oval Office by Caitlin Collins from CNN about some of the people in his orbit who are mentioned in the files.

20:15And you could hear his frustration that this is still an ongoing topic. On the Epstein files, you talk about Democrats who were in there. Elon Musk was also in there. and so was your Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and correspondence that he had with him. Did you read those new files that were published by the Department of Justice? No, I didn't. I have a lot of things I'm doing. You know, a lot of things I'm doing. I don't know. You mentioned two names. I'm sure they're fine. I'm sure they're fine. Otherwise, it would have been major headlines. A lot of women who are survivors of Epstein's are unhappy with those redactions that came out.

20:45Some of them, entire witness interviews are totally blacked out. Do you think that they should be more transparent? They thought they released too much. I heard that. and you tell me something else. I think it's really time for the country to get onto something else. Now that nothing came out about me, other than there was a conspiracy against me, literally, by Epstein and other people. But I think it's time now for the country to maybe get onto something else. But what would you say to people who feel like they have gotten justice, Mr President? Something that people care about. And he went on to be quite abusive towards Cailin Collins, personally saying she was Ed Pearson who never smiles and she was saying it's not a laughing matter really talking about the victims of Jeffrey Epstein.

21:29But you could hear how frustrated he was there, Anthony, couldn't you, that it's time to change the subject. Although, I mean, I did wonder when these were released last Friday if we had reached this bizarre point where there was something worse happening in the country where they were going to release the Epstein files to distract from what was happening in Minneapolis and Minnesota, despite all the numerous times we think they've staged some kind of political event to distract from the argument of the Epstein files. Last week turned it on its head. I'm getting confused of what we're supposed to be distracted from what these days.

21:57But yeah, you know, the way these Epstein files came out, you know, we were all waiting for that deadline and the documents were all going to be released. And that was supposed to be 19th of December last year. Yeah. So we had all of these resources and a lot of media outlets had all these resources dedicated to pouring through that. And they came out with some And then, you know, there was no big revelation there. And then they came out with some more like later in December. It just it's been a challenge, I think, for everyone to get their head around the totality of all of this. There are so many documents and so many different names.

22:34And so to try to step back and say, OK, what did we learn and what is still out there? I think that's something that challenges us as journalists and certainly challenges the public to try to to stay focused on when, like you said, there's so many other huge stories out there. You know, Minneapolis being a big one. What happened in Venezuela? And another big one, the Greenland thing, which seems like a lifetime ago. And that was what, two weeks ago. It is it's overwhelming. So this story has had legs, and certainly every time we think it's died down for good, it pops back up again. So I'm not going to say that this is done and dusted, as they say, but you can see Trump wants to close the door on this, and perhaps without anything big on the horizon, maybe he'll be able to do that, whether it is to his benefit, and actually move on to better things for him or not, that remains to be seen.

23:29Mary, I was telling us what the reaction on social media has been like in our world, on the Hill and amongst commentators or whomever in the mainstream media. Does MAGA seem satisfied that the president's done what they wanted? Are the likes of the Congress people who were particularly active in demanding the release of the Epstein files, are they satisfied? Yeah, I think Mariana talked about that a bit, but just from the congressional perspective, the people like Thomas Massey, the Republican from Kentucky, and Ro Khanna, the Democrat from California, who really were the driving force behind that legislation that forced the files to be revealed, they aren't satisfied.

24:07They still think there's more out there. The victims certainly say there's more out there, and they want more to be done. Lisa Phillips, one of the victims who has been a public face of this, she spoke to the World Service. And here is what she had to say about these latest developments. A lot of us survivors were really very unhappy with the outcome so far. The DOJ has violated all three of our requirements. Number one, many documents still haven't been disclosed. Number two, the date set for release has long passed. And number three, the DOJ released the names of many of the survivors. And that's not OK.

24:43We feel like they're playing some games with us, but we're not going to stop fighting. There's going to be continued pressure to try to find these new files or more files that they say are still out there. And that's not going to die. That's not going to go away anytime soon. And it's pretty clear there is not an ongoing criminal process at the Department of Justice. They are not investigating any of the men in Epstein's orbit looking at any potential crimes here. We're no closer to any prosecutions as a result of this or any work that's ongoing, are we? Right. And the administration has said from the very beginning that they're doing this in an even-handed fashion, that they haven't been trying to protect Donald Trump and that this is just a challenge dealing with all of this information.