Hillary Clinton revealed that her deposition about Jeffrey Epstein took a bizarre twist.
The former first lady, 78, said she repeatedly denied any ties to the late sex offender when she sat down before the House Oversight Committee at the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center in New York on Thursday.
“I don’t know how many times I had to say I did not know Jeffrey Epstein, 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,” she told reporters.
“It then got, at the end, quite unusual, because I started being asked about UFOs and a series of questions about ‘Pizzagate,’ one of the most vile, bogus conspiracy theories that was propagated on the internet that was serving as the basis of a member’s questions to me,” she added.
“Pizzagate” is a baseless hoax that came out ahead of the 2016 presidential election, accusing Clinton and Democratic elites of running a child sex-trafficking ring from the Washington, D.C., pizzeria Comet Ping Pong. A gunman opened fire at the restaurant in December 2016, and he was killed by North Carolina police in a traffic stop just last year.
On the 2016 campaign trail, Clinton also jokingly pledged to “get to the bottom” of UFOs.
Clinton finally sat down with lawmakers after a months-long standoff with Kentucky Rep. James Comer, the Trump-loving chairman of the House Oversight Committee. Her husband, the former President Bill Clinton, is scheduled to testify on Friday.
Despite accusing lawmakers of “partisan political theater” in a lengthy statement released before the deposition, Clinton told reporters that she answered every question as “fully” as she could.
“I never met Jeffrey Epstein. Never had any connection or communication with him,” she said. “I knew Ghislaine Maxwell casually as an acquaintance, but whatever they asked me, I did my very best to respond.”
“It was disappointing that they refused to hold a public hearing so I wouldn’t have to be out here characterizing it for you. You could have seen it for yourself,” she continued. “We had asked for that. We think it would have been better for the committee and its efforts to gather whatever information they are seeking.”
The deposition briefly devolved into chaos after MAGA loyalist Lauren Boebert leaked a photo of the closed-door deposition to right-wing influencer Benny Johnson.
“Clinton does not look happy,” Johnson wrote in an X post. “Photo provided by Rep. Lauren Boebert.”
Shortly after Johnson published the photo, Clinton spokesperson Nick Merrill stepped out of the deposition room to speak to the media.
“The hearing just went off the record for a moment because it seems—and some of you may have seen—that there were some photographs shared on social media, which is against chamber rules that were read at the top of the meeting,” he said.
After the deposition, Clinton told reporters that she found the leak “very upsetting, because it suggested that they might violate other of our agreements.” She said the hearing resumed after her team got assurances that no other rules would be broken.
Boebert wrote on X that “Benny did nothing wrong”—without acknowledging that she was the one who breached the agreement.
