Hillary Clinton accuses Trump of Epstein 'cover up'

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1:00Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Will Chalk and in the early hours of Tuesday the 17th of February, these are our main stories. The former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tells the BBC she thinks there's been a cover-up by the Trump administration over the Epstein files, something the White House strongly denies. President Trump believes Iran wants to make a deal as a second round of indirect talks over Tehran's nuclear programme are about to begin. Also in this podcast. My mother would have said if you make your bed, you'll own it.

1:46These are people who went overseas supporting Islamic State. Australia's Prime Minister says he will refuse to repatriate women and children trying to leave a detention camp in Syria. And there are tributes to the legendary American actor Robert Duvall, who's died aged 95.

2:09Our top story is comments made to the BBC by former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She's told us she thinks there's been a cover up by the Trump administration over Jeffrey Epstein. Mrs. Clinton and her husband, the former U.S. President Bill Clinton, have agreed to testify later this month in the congressional investigation into the late sex offender, which will allow them to avoid being found in contempt of Congress. Mrs. Clinton was speaking in Berlin to our correspondent Jessica Parker, who began by asking her if she regretted the links between Epstein, his convicted associate Ghislaine Maxwell, and the Clinton family.

2:46Well, let me start by saying that a law was passed in Congress to require that all the files that have anything to do with them be released. And what we're seeing, I think it's fair to say, is a continuing cover-up by the Trump administration. In fact, when the attorney general testified last week, it was quite a scene because she refused to answer questions. She diverted attention away from the matters at hand. She refused to look at the survivors. So there's something about this administration's attitude toward this, which I think really leads us to conclude they have something to hide. We don't.

3:28We have been willing to say whatever we know. We've even done it under oath. But they want us to testify, not everyone else who's mentioned many, many times, hundreds of thousands of times in these files. So we've said, fine, let us do it in public. And we will appear in public and we'll answer all your questions. And we'll get to that in just a moment. But just to be clear, do you regret the links that there have been? You know, we have no links. We have a very clear record that we've been willing to talk about, which my husband has said he took some rides on the airplane for his charitable work.

4:09I don't recall ever meeting him. Did you ever meet Ghislaine Maxwell? I did on a few occasions, and thousands of people go to the Clinton Global Initiative. So it, to me, is not something that is really at the heart of what this matter is about. They are accused and in both cases were convicted of horrific crimes against girls and women. That should be the focus. And we are more than happy to say what we know, which is very limited and totally unrelated to their behavior or their crimes. And we want to do it in public because let's make this transparent. The survivors deserve that. The public deserves that.

4:56But, you know, the Republican member of Congress who is running this hearing or this investigation is trying to protect the president. So let's get to what's really at stake here. Just on this hearing, and obviously, I'm sure Donald Trump and his administration would reject your characterization of what's going on. And he's denied any wrongdoing. How can they reject it? They can't answer questions. And the attorney general was clearly unwilling to answer questions. She works for him. So let's be very clear here. According to what we now know, Mr. Trump, President Trump, is mentioned, some say, a million times in the files.

5:36People in his cabinet are mentioned. I think it's correct. That's what it says, you know, on the Internet over and over again. So let's find out what the truth is. That's why we want it to be transparent and in public. And on that, your upcoming appearance before the Oversight Committee, where are we with that? You want to appear in public, public versus closed-door deposition. Is it going ahead and how? What is the format going to be? We will show up, but we think it would be better to have it in public. because what we want is for everybody to get to the facts about this. We have nothing to hide.

6:14We have called for the full release of these files repeatedly. We think sunlight is the best disinfectant. Get the files out. They are slow-walking it. They are redacting the names of men who are in it. They are stonewalling legitimate requests from members of Congress. That has nothing to do with us. Something is going on. They know it. I know it. If they're going to have me testify, I would prefer to do it in public because I want everybody to see it at the same time. If I have to do it behind closed doors, they're not going to like what I have to say because I have very strong opinions about what it is they're hiding and who they are protecting.

6:51I just want to ask you, there are calls for another individual who denies wrongdoing to go before Congress on this matter. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew. Do you think he should testify? I think everybody should testify. Including the former prince. I think everybody should testify who was asked to testify. I just want it to be fair. I want everybody treated the same way. That's not true for my husband and me because other witnesses were asked to testify. They gave written statements under oath. We offered that. Hillary Clinton there speaking to the BBC's Jessica Parker in Berlin.

7:30and we put those claims that there had been a cover-up to the White House. The BBC's Katrina Perry got the details from our North America correspondent, Helena Humphrey. Secretary Clinton made the allegation that the speed and scale and scope of the release of the Epstein files was what she called a cover-up and in response to that writing to the BBC, the White House has said, quote, by releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee subpoena request and President Trump recently calling for further investigations into Epstein's Democrat friends. The Trump administration has done more for the victims than Democrats ever have.

8:11Now, there was also a claim made by Secretary Clinton that President Trump was mentioned. She said some say millions of times, and we have previously heard from the administration saying references with regards to President Trump are from an FBI tip line, And this was essentially tips that were given without evidence and haven't been verified. And of course, as we always point out, inclusion in these files doesn't mean any sort of wrongdoing. And the president himself has consistently denied any wrongdoing. He has consistently denied any wrongdoing. And President Trump has said that he had long cut off contact with Jeffrey Epstein.

8:50He says around 2004, before he was first arrested. He is mentioned in the files, as you say, is not proof of any wrongdoing or of any criminal misconduct. But the Department of Justice has previously referenced the fact that the president was mentioned. And again, I can quote you some of that statement. They have said some docs contain untrue and sensationalist claims against Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election, this statement says. To be clear, it goes on to say the claims are unfounded and false. And if they have any shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponised against Trump already.

9:26That's from the Department of Justice. Now, on another matter, we also heard Hillary Clinton there call for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince, to come to the US and answer some questions. Others have made that same call. But can he be compelled to do so? Well, to be clear, there isn't a legal mechanism that would force the former prince, Andrew, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, to come to the United States, to respond to that subpoena, to give testimony, despite those growing calls, and of course being named in those files, as we say, not indicative of misconduct. We know that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, for his part, has strenuously and repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

10:04Our North America correspondent, Helena Humphrey. On Monday, a group of Australian citizens held in a camp in northern Syria for nearly seven years due to their links to Islamic State fighters, were released to begin their journey back home. But after being seen boarding minibuses for the capital Damascus, they were quickly forced to turn around, reportedly because of issues with the Syrian authorities. Speaking to ABC, the Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese refused to help the 34 women and children. My mother would have said if you make your bed, you lie in it. These are people who went overseas supporting Islamic State and you know it is unfortunate for the children they caught up.

10:48It is but we have a very firm view that we won't be providing assistance or repatriation. Our Sydney correspondent Katie Watson told me what we know about this case? We know that they've been in Northern Syria for nearly seven years. 34 Australian women and children believed to be the wives and children of IS fighters. So they've been stuck in a detention camp because the Australian government has this policy of refusing to repatriate them officially. Now you mentioned why they were meant to be released and then that was halted. We're unclear really about what the future is as a result. But Australia has been very clear, and we heard it from Albanese citing his mother there, that they wouldn't be repatriating people from Syria, that those who returned had committed crimes.

11:42They'd be met with a full force of law. But I think this is the issue, and that was brought up by the interviewer on ABC, as we heard there. You know, what about there are children involved? and that's something that the camp's director has been pleading Australia to take back their citizens, that children were growing up in the camp surrounded by dangerous ideas and ideologies and that Australia needed to take responsibility for their citizens. Yeah, you mentioned the law there. What exactly does the Australian law say on this? So the Australian government's been very clear that it doesn't repatriate people from Syria.

12:14They say that they're monitoring, they continue to monitor the situation in Syria to make sure that they are prepared for any Australians seeking to return back here. But they have also made it very clear that if they have committed a crime, if they want to return to Australia, they will be met with the full force of law. But they're also clear in saying that the safety of Australians is paramount, the protection of Australia's national interests. That's the main priority. But there is an understanding that if people present to the Australian embassy, that there is a responsibility to issue them passports.

12:48But these people didn't get to that point. And just quickly, I mean, it's not just Australian citizens in these camps in Syria, is it? No, I mean, probably the most famous kind of case in the UK is Shmima Bingham. There's been a huge controversy over her and whether she should be able to return to the UK. But the decision was made to remove her citizenship. You know, I think this is clearly not just an Australian case, this is a universal case, but also a humanitarian case as well. Our Sydney correspondent Katie Watson. World Cup winning cricketer Smriti Mandana has won the BBC Indian Sportswoman of the Year Award.

13:31She was vice captain as they won the 2025 ICC Women's World Cup. This is part of her acceptance speech. Thank you to BBC for giving me the award for best sportswoman of the year, Indian. And 2025 was a special year for women's cricket, especially if we had a World Cup. And I'm happy that I could contribute in any ways to help India win matches. Thank you. Smriti Mandana was chosen by a grand jury, which included Grand Slam tennis champion Leander Pess and World Championship long jump medalist Andrew Bobby George. But her journey into sports was perhaps easier than other girls and women, as she had the support of her family.

14:09Her brother and father were cricketers. So what challenges do female athletes face in India? Our correspondent in Delhi, Ishadrita Lahiri, explains. I interviewed Smriti Mandhana a few days ago and she was telling me that it's almost surreal that women's cricket has come to this point in India. And she was telling me how when she was younger, she grew up practicing against male cricketers. and now for women's cricket to be at a point where women's cricketers are getting advertisements at a certain point in time was only what you'd associate with the male cricketers. And this particular award is important because there aren't many awards which are for sports women in India.

14:50It is an uphill journey even now. If I could just give you an example, I was speaking to one of our jury members, Anju Bobby George, India's premier athletes, and she was telling me that in her sports academy, which is supposed to be one of the best in India and very difficult to get into, she often gets requests from younger female players and from their parents to drop out from the academy so that they can get married before they turn adults. And to think that this could even happen in an elite sports academy really tells you how much Indian sports, especially for women, how much ground it still has to cover.

15:26And, you know, it's very interesting because in India, if you are playing a certain kind of sports, whether you're a man or a woman, it makes you eligible for government jobs. So a lot of people in rural areas who probably do not have the means to make it big in sports, they just start out in sports so that they can get a government job. And that just says that there's a lot of talent in India, but we still need that capital to come into Indian sports, especially for women, to make it big in the world state. That was Ishidrita Lahiri. Still to come in this podcast, heartbreak in Italy as a famous natural landmark collapses.

16:07Today we woke to some really sad news. It's very painful and on Valentine's Day of all days.

16:20If you can't keep up with all the Epstein news, you're not alone. This week, the files have nearly but not quite brought down a British Prime Minister, There have been allegations that Epstein was a spy and surprising countries have been drawn into the scandal, from Norway to Poland to Israel to France. It's a lot. So we're recapping all the main developments and making sense of them. Listen to the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. We focus on the part of the internet that most people don't know about. It's called the dark web. undercover in the furthest corners of the dark web.

17:00US special agents are on a mission to locate and rescue children from abuse. Move in now. From the BBC World Service, World of Secrets, the darkest web follows their shocking investigations. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts. America is changing and so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London, and this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet.

17:44Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to put all the issues on the table that keep me up at night. The interview brings you conversations with the people shaping our world. From global leaders. I've much more than fulfilled the promises that I've made. To cultural icons. I'm just interested in how it feels to be playing songs that are 50 odd years old. Songs are like children. They're with you forever. The interview from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

18:24This is the Global News Podcast. The rhetoric from the US and Iran over what the barriers are to a nuclear deal and how to break them seems to shift day by day. The two countries are resuming indirect talks over Tehran's nuclear programme. Ahead of the meeting in Geneva, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said it believed Washington had moved towards a more realistic position. Lise Doucette is reporting from Tehran on condition that none of her material is used on the BBC's Persian service. These restrictions apply to all international organisations operating in Iran. Both American and Iranian negotiators say they want a deal.

19:03What's not clear is just how wide the gaps are between them. Iranian officials say they're ready to compromise as long as the US is ready to lift sanctions, now crippling Iran's economy. They're also adamant that these talks can focus only on their nuclear program, not on other issues, including ballistic missiles, which some senior U.S. officials, as well as Israel, insist must be on the table. Iran believes it's now winning this argument. But President Trump continues to send conflicting signals. He often says he prefers to do a deal. But he recently remarked that regime change would be the best thing to happen in Iran.

19:45Donald Trump has been speaking to reporters about the impending talk, saying he thinks Iran does want to make a deal. But is that likely? I asked our correspondent Peter Bowes. I think as far as President Trump is concerned, we've been hearing this message from him for some time, that he believes that Iran wants to make a deal, although it is far from clear what a framework would look like for a deal to be agreed, given the complexity of the issues. But the president said, and he didn't elaborate, that he would be indirectly involved in the talks, talks with tough, as he put it, Iranian negotiators, the second round of talks in Switzerland.

20:24He said that they were very important and that crucially, he didn't think Iran wanted the consequences of not making a deal, that he believed that the Iranians were motivated to negotiate. So there is that implied threat of unspecified consequences if, at the end of this process, however long it takes, the White House believes that it hasn't got what it's set out to achieve. And what about from an Iranian perspective, then? Well, from an Iranian perspective, and we've just heard in Lisa's report there, that as far as the Iranians are concerned, that essentially there is one issue on the table here, and that is the nuclear issue, that they do not want it complicated by, and this may be unrealistic, but the complexities involve the demand of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, for example, that all enriched uranium is removed from Iran as part of any eventual deal.

21:21Iran has ruled that out, saying that the enrichment is for civilian purposes. Israel also wants to curb Iran's development of ballistic missiles which have been used to strike Israel. Those issues complicate an already complicated scenario between the US and Iran. Peter Bowes. A BBC Eye investigation has revealed how two US agents from Homeland Security Investigations rescued a 12-year-old girl who'd been sexually abused for six years after images of her were found on the dark web. The only information the agents had was that the girl was located somewhere in America. their job was to find her based on what they could see in the images her abuser was sharing.

22:03So the girl's face and the interior of the room she was being abused in. So how do you find someone whose abuser is determined to keep them hidden? BBCI documentary maker Sam Perranti reports. To look at her as a six-year-old little girl and to see her eyes and the light that is quite normal in a child that age And then to look at her in that 12-year-old range and just to see that start to dim, you see what looks like an old woman behind those eyes and to go, who has the right to extinguish that? Special agents Greg Squire and Pete Manning are part of a network of undercover investigators who track and catch paedophiles who operate on the dark web.

22:47This girl in very normal environments, surrounded by the things that she would have in everyday life, her favorite clothes, her bed, all these things that you'd normally see in just everybody's house was now, like, captured in these terrible moments that were surrounded by normal things. The abuser the agents are looking for has taken care to ensure there is nothing in the images he is sharing on the dark web which could reveal her location. So they look elsewhere. Clothing, bedding, furniture, just, you know, anything we saw, basically. They're tracking down every item they can see in the pictures, trying to trace all the people who have bought the item and if any of them have been flagged as child abusers.

23:34But then they have an idea. We looked at the bricks. One wall in the room in the images is made of exposed brick. The agents decide to take a photo of them and send it to the American Brick Industry Association. I think within just a few hours, we started getting responses. We started getting emails from people going, hey, my name is so-and-so. I work for this brick company. That brick is called yada, yada, yada. And I was like smiling so bad. I was like, I can't believe we found the experts at this. My name is John Harp. I work for Acme Brick Company. for 43 years. I asked Greg Squire if they could enhance the photo inning and when I saw that I knew exactly what the brick was.

24:27Special agent Greg Squire was at home when he took the call from Acme brick salesman John Harp who told him that the specific brick had only been made at one plant. He goes if we sold an Alamo fire brick that brick didn't travel outside 100 miles of this plant right here and I was so happy when he said that I could barely like contain myself. That very next morning we took all of the data records we had and we took a map and drew ourselves a hundred mile radius and said she's inside this circle somewhere. The agents cross-referenced the sale records of the items and the images with the area they now knew she lives in.

25:12They find her within days. Her abuser was her mother's boyfriend, but she is just one child. There are thousands more whose images are being shared by paedophiles on the dark web. This is a calling in a way, just like a soldier has a calling and many professionals do. You don't get asked a lot of second questions sometimes when you talk to people. And I get that. I don't do the work because I need anything more than we're doing the best we can for the children. That report by Sam Perranti. And we can tell you that within hours, the girl's abuser was arrested. He was subsequently sentenced to more than 70 years in jail.

25:53You can hear more of that as well. You can listen to the full investigation. It's called The Darkest Web. It's available wherever you get your BBC podcast. There's also a BBC documentary on the World Service YouTube page and on BBC.com if you're in the US. next a born actor with a phenomenal gift just one of the tributes that's been paid to legendary american actor robert duvall who's died at the age of 95 he starred in some of the most critically acclaimed films of the 20th century including the godfather and apocalypse now and to give you an idea of how well he's thought of in hollywood that quote i started with was from none other than al Pacino.