Friday, February 27, 2026. Yesterday, members of the House Oversight Committee went to Chappaqua to show how the Republican-controlled Committee will do anything in its power to avoid actually addressing Jeffrey Epstein and his crimes.
Former
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told U.S. House lawmakers on
Thursday that she had no knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein's or Ghislaine
Maxwell's crimes at the start of two days of depositions that will also
include former President Clinton.
“I had no
idea about their criminal activities. I do not recall ever encountering
Mr. Epstein," Hillary Clinton said in an opening statement she shared on
social media.
The closed-door depositions in the
Clintons' hometown of Chappaqua, a typically quiet hamlet north of New
York City, come after months of tense back-and-forth between the former
high-powered Democratic couple and the Republican-controlled House
Oversight Committee. It will be the first time that a former president
has been forced to testify before Congress.
Representative
Lauren Boebert of Colorado shared a photograph of Mrs. Clinton
answering questions, which was posted on social media by Benny Johnson, a
right-wing podcaster. Mrs. Clinton’s attorneys immediately asked to
pause the proceedings, noting that the former secretary of state had
been denied her request for a public hearing. The deposition resumed
about 30 minutes later.
Representative
Yassamin Ansari, Democrat of Arizona, also took a break to speak to
reporters outside a performing arts center in Chappaqua, N.Y., where the
House Oversight Committee investigating the Epstein matter has been
taking a deposition from Hillary Clinton. “We are sitting through an
incredibly unserious clown show of a deposition,” she said, adding that
Republicans in Congress were more concerned with getting photos of the
closed proceeding out than “than holding anyone accountable.”
And
it was pointless. Hillary has no association with Jeffrey Epstein. As
she pointed out, the whole thing was a distraction from Donald Chump
who does have a reason to be questioned -- under oath -- and his wife
Melania who also has a reason to be questioned under oath. Both Chumps
are pictured repeatedly with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell,
Melania has her e-mail to "G" that was released in the last document
dump. There are rumors that Epstein introduced Donald to Melania. And
that's before we get into the big news about the woman who complained to
the FBI about Donald -- and how it was left out of the documents Pam
Bondi released. As Hillary noted in her opening statement -- which she
posted in full on social media, "Instead, you have compelled me
to testify, fully aware that I have no knowledge that would assist your
investigation, in order to distract attention from President Trump's
actions and to cover them up despite legitimate calls for answers,"
Lawrence O'Donnell noted last night on MS NOW how Hillary called out this administration for covering up and for undercutting efforts to combat sex trafficking.
House
Democrats on Thursday demanded President Donald Trump follow the
Clintons in testifying to congressional investigators on ties to
disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton began a closed-door deposition Thursday by a
House panel investigating Epstein in Chappaqua in upstate New York,
where she has a home with her husband, former President Bill Clinton,
according to a person familiar with the proceedings. Bill Clinton is set
to face questioning on Friday.
The House
committee’s subpoena to a former president “sets a precedent,”
Representative Robert Garcia, the panel’s top-ranking Democrat, told
reporters gathered outside the local performing arts center where the
panel is questioning the Clintons.
“The person who
actually appears more times in the files than the former president, who
we want to speak with, is President Donald Trump,” Garcia told
reporters.
Comer-Pyle,
head of the US House Oversight Committee, managed to show up for this
deposition -- he and the other Republican members of the committee
bailed last week on Les Wexner's deposition. He corn-poned himself but
managed to attend. Prior to attending, Tom Durante (MEDIAITE) reports:
Rep.
James Comer (R-KY) was pressed by reporters about a possible Jeffrey
Epstein cover-up by the Trump administration as he prepared to quiz
former first lady and secretary of state Hillary Clinton on her ties to
the notorious sex trafficker.
Speaking from
Chappaqua, NY before the deposition was set to begin, Comer, the House
Oversight Committee chair, was asked about a recent report that the
Justice Department withheld dozens of pages from the Epstein document
dump that mentioned President Donald Trump, including an allegation that
he sexually abused a minor.
“We’re
looking into the accusation by the NPR,” said Comer, who was flanked by
fellow Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Nancy Mace (R-SC), Anna Paulina
Luna (R-FL), and others. “We don’t know the answer to that. We know what
the administration says. We’re still looking to to get a definitive
answer on that.”
The NPR investigation,
published on February 24, found over 50 pages that appear to have been
catalogued, but were not a part of the massive trove of files related to
Epstein.
The accusation by the NPR? Comer-Pyle is an idiot.
The
Justice Department said Thursday that it is examining whether it
wrongly withheld FBI files that contained allegations against President
Donald Trump in its release of millions of pages from the investigatory
files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Three
summaries of interviews the FBI conducted in 2019 with a woman who had
accused Trump of sexually assaulting her are missing from the files,
multiple news outlets have reported. The woman had accused Trump of
sexually assaulting her decades earlier while she was a minor. No
evidence has emerged publicly to corroborate that accusation.
The
existence of the summaries — known as 302s in law enforcement parlance —
was noted in an index that the Justice Department included in the
massive cache of files released over the past three months in response
to the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The index suggested that law
enforcement agents interviewed the woman on four occasions, writing up a
summary in each instance. Only one of the four summaries was included
in the release.
The summaries were among the
materials prosecutors gave to defense attorneys as part of the discovery
process leading up to the trial of Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine
Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 on sex-trafficking charges.
Independent journalist Roger Sollenberger first reported on the apparent missing files.
The
woman who accused Trump also said Epstein assaulted her when she was a
minor in the 1980s. In an account that was included in the files, the
woman said that Epstein introduced her to Trump and that Trump assaulted
her.
Speaking
of Trump’s name being in the files, that’s one of several instances of
him downplaying his proximity to Epstein using claims that were
subsequently undermined or called into question:
Trump in July denied being told his name was in the files, shortly before we found out Attorney General Pam Bondi had indeed told him that back in May.
In
2019, he said that he “wasn’t a fan” of Epstein’s and added, “I knew
him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him.” In fact, lots of evidence
has suggested they were friendly before their falling out, including
archived video footage and photos of them together uncovered by CNN’s KFile. The New York Times even reported Epstein once called Trump his “best friend.”
When Trump hasn’t made demonstrably false claims, he’s often been opaque:
He
and his allies offered a number of claims for why Trump hadn’t written
Epstein a lewd birthday letter published by the Wall Street Journal.
While we don’t have proof that Trump authored the letter, the claims
they used to deny it seemed to fall apart.
Trump in July seemed to reluctantly acknowledge
he had known that Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell recruited their
victim, Virginia Giuffre, from Mar-a-Lago. Trump previously avoided
discussing why he and Epstein had a falling out, including saying in
2019: “The reason doesn’t make any difference, frankly.”
We then learned recently that Trump told a local police chief when Epstein was first under investigation in the mid-2000s that “everyone has known he’s been doing this.”
There have been other data points at least gesturing in the direction that Trump knew Epstein liked young women.
But what he told local Florida police is perhaps the most compelling
evidence yet that Trump knew something about Epstein’s crimes way back
when.
White
House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she couldn’t confirm
whether that conversation happened. She added that if it did, it
“corroborates” Trump having called Epstein a “creep” and broken ties
with him. But Trump has never been forthcoming about why he decided
Epstein was a creep.
You begin to see how that might look bad. Maxwell, after all, is a convicted sex offender. She was also saying things that could help Trump — even as he dangled a potential pardon.
But the administration spent months not explaining why the transfer occurred.
Eventually Blanche told NBC News
shortly before Christmas that the Bureau of Prisons recommended the
transfer, and he suggested he had signed off on it. Blanche said that
Maxwell had been facing “numerous threats against her life.”
But in testimony earlier this month, Bondi said she hadn’t known about
the transfer (despite being Blanche’s boss) and claimed Maxwell was
transferred to “the same-level facility,” which doesn’t appear to be
true.
The apparent cover up flies in the face of
what Pam Bondi told -- shouted, sneered, screeched -- at the House
Judiciary Committee earlier this month. She drew attention to herself
as she insisted there were no accusations against Donald Chump. She had
a fit when US House Rep Ted Lieu attempted to explore that avenue. She lied to the committee. Which is why Ted's office issued the following this week:
WASHINGTON - Today,
Congressman Ted W. Lieu (D-Los Angeles County) and Congressman Dan
Goldman (D-NY) sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche
calling for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Attorney
General Pam Bondi for allegedly committing perjury during her February
11, 2026 testimony before the House Committee on the Judiciary when she
said, “there is no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime.”
Following the hearing, NPR reported that the Justice Department has withheld and removed some Epstein files related to Trump from the public database.
In the letter, the Members write:
Dear Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche,
As
former prosecutors, we watched – along with millions of Americans –
Attorney General Pam Bondi lie under oathbefore Congress. Testifying
before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on February 11, 2026,
Attorney GeneralBondi emphatically stated, “There is no evidence that
Donald Trump has committed a crime.” Yet a number of thedocuments from
the Epstein files released to date by the Department of Justice directly
contradict her statement.When confronted with her lie, she did not
retract her statement, she doubled down. She stated, “Don’t you ever
accuse me of committing a crime.”
Attorney
General Bondi committed the crime of making false statements under
oath, under 18 U.S.C. § 1001. We request that you immediately appoint a
special counsel to investigate Attorney General Bondi for committing
perjury. America cannot have a liar and a criminal as our top law
enforcement officer.
Donald Trump
is all over the Epstein files released to date – which is only half of
the total number of documents in your possession – referenced over
38,000 times. Below are just a few examples of the evidence released by
the Department of Justice alleging that Trump committed crimes:
The
DOJ released a 21-page internal slideshow presentation about
investigations into Epstein. In it, there aretwo accusations against
Donald Trump provided by two witnesses:
o “[REDACTED] stated Epstein introduced her to
Trump who subsequently forced her head down to hisexposed penis which
she subsequently bit. In response, Trump punched her in the head and
kicked herout. (Date range 1983-1985, [REDACTED] would have been
13-15).”
o “[REDACTED] remember Epstein introduced
her to Trump saying “this is a good one, huh” and Trumpresponded “Yes”.
(Date range roughly 1984, [REDACTED] would have been 14).”
A
separate FBI record reflects that an individual contacted the FBI’s
National Threat Operations Centerreporting that, as a limo driver, he
overheard Trump “continuously stated the name ‘Jeffrey’ while on the
phone, and made references to “abusing some girl.” The individual also
said he met a girl who said she was raped by Trump and Epstein.
In
July 2019, FBI interview transcripts released by the DOJ indicate that a
witness expressed fear of retaliation when discussing individuals who
were “well known” including “current United States President Donald
Trump.”
These examples
contradict her claim that there is “no evidence that Donald Trump has
committed a crime.” Whenconfronted with one of these pieces of evidence,
Attorney General Bondi doubled down instead of retracting her false
statement. She also inappropriately and creepily spied on Members of
Congress who were searching through the Epstein Files, so we know that
she would have seen the documents that incriminated Trump.
Further,
it appears that the DOJ removed a document indicating that the underage
accuser referenced above in the21-page internal slideshow was
interviewed not once, but “at least four times” by the FBI.6 The removal of that document is not only suspicious, it raises obvious concerns about a coverup.
Moreover,
both you and AG Bondi have stated that all of the survivors who have
reached out to the Department have been able to provide testimony and
evidence. As the country saw during
last
week’s hearing, that is demonstrably false. Every survivor who attended
that hearing indicated that they hadtried to meet with the Department
and were rebuffed but would still be willing to provide evidence and
testimony. Unless the Department is overtly covering up for President
Trump or other child predators, we expect that theDepartment will meet
with those survivors immediately.
Attorney
General Bondi’s conduct meets all the elements of the crime of making
false statements under oath. Sinceshe obviously isn’t going to prosecute
herself, a clear conflict of interest exists.
Therefore,
under 28 C.F.R. § 600.1, we request that you immediately appoint a
special counsel to investigate Attorney General Pam Bondi for making
false statements under oath during her February 11, 2026, testimony
before the House Committee on the Judiciary.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this important matter. We look forward to receiving your response.
Now that everyone knows she lied, Democrats want answers. TAG24 NEWS notes:
Senate
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused the Department of Justice, led by
Attorney General Pam Bondi, of unlawfully withholding documents that
could implicate or embarrass Trump, and pledged accountability for those
responsible.
"Let me be blunt, there is a
massive cover-up going on in the Justice Department to protect Donald
Trump and people associated with Jeffrey Epstein," Schumer told
reporters.
"As
we expected, Trump, Bondi, and their minions have played games with the
release of these files, released some documents they wanted to release,
and continue to hide others...President Trump – what are you trying to
hide?"
Multiple
outlets and Democratic lawmakers have reported that the Department of
Justice failed to release materials in Epstein files that documented FBI
interviews with a female witness who alleged that Trump and disgraced
pedophile Jeffrey Epstein sexually assaulted her when she was a minor.
The
substance of the allegation against the president and its cover-up have
broken through, as they should. It is absolutely surreal to say the
president of the United States is an accused pedophile - and that our
country's law enforcement apparatus, together with the Republican Party,
seems intent on killing that story. Yet that is where we are.
The
omitted FBI interviews with Trump's accuser are part of the tranche of
Epstein files - documents in the federal government's possession related
to its investigations of disgraced financier Epstein. Last year,
Congress passed a bipartisan law requiring Department of Justice to
release the files (subject to what are supposed to be narrow redactions,
including of victims' names or material used in an ongoing federal
investigation).
Of
course, in any investigation, law enforcement receives junk tips that
don't go anywhere. But there are several indications that the material
the department is attempting to bury was viewed as serious.
For
one thing, the witness who alleged Trump sexually assaulted her was
interviewed by the FBI four times. If the witness wasn't credible, a
second, third and fourth FBI interview probably wouldn't have been
warranted. The witness interview was also memorialized in a 302, a form
the FBI uses for documenting interviews with witnesses. Those documents,
302s, are significant investigative material - so much so that Deputy
Attorney General Todd Blanche specifically instructed the Justice
Department to flag 302s as they were reviewing the Epstein files.
Then
there is the fact that the witness made a similar allegation (that she
was sexually assaulted by Epstein and another prominent man) in
litigation she filed in 2019. This witness - and their allegation
against Trump - was also included in an internal department presentation
that listed claims made against prominent individuals. So, again, this
isn't someone who was being dismissed by people involved in the
investigation.
The
Justice Department has yet to release all of the Epstein files, even
though the deadline to do so has already passed. But it's hard to
imagine that, under Attorney General Pam Bondi's leadership, the
department is investigating this allegation against Trump in light of
all of the preferential treatment the president has received so far.
As Hillary said in her opening remarks to the Commitee:
A
committee run by elected officials with a commitment to transparency
would ensure the full release of all the files. It would ensure that the
lawful redactions of those files protected the victims and survivors,
not powerful men and political allies. It would get to the bottom of
reports that DOJ withheld FBI interviews in which a survivor accuses
President Trump of heinous crimes.
Howard Lutnick is one of the many people in the administration who had relationships with Jeffrey Epstein. Lutnick, Robert Kennedy Jr., Doctor Oz, Stephen Feinberg, John Phelan, Kevin Warsh, Tom Barrack, Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, Melania Chump and Donald Chump all had ties to Epstein.
None has been asked to testify before the committee. And none has announced that they're stepping down.
So
far, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has been able to score deals
that make President Donald Trump happy. However, he's now alienated the
rest of the powers that be.
According to Politico,
politicians on both sides of the aisle are angry over Lutnick's name
popping up in the investigation files around Jeffrey Epstein. Lutnick
lived next to Epstein for a time, went to his home and to his private
island with his family. He never engaged in anything untoward, he told
reporters.
“He is
thumbing a middle finger to anyone who thinks he’s on the outs because
the president has really given a lot of his Cabinet the assurance that
they’re not going anywhere until he wants them to go somewhere,” said
one person close to the White House.
Other
Cabinet-level officials don't like Lutnick's "style," the report said.
And there are larger questions about how much Lutnick's children were
profiting from his position in the Cabinet. Over the holidays, Trump
confronted the secretary over the matter while at Mar-a-Lago.
House
Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer appears to be changing his
tune on Howard Lutnick, now suggesting that it is "very possible" he
might subpoena him after the Trump Commerce Secretary allegedly lied
before Congress about the extent of his ties to convicted sex offender
Jeffrey Epstein.
Just two weeks ago, MS NOW reported that Chairman Comer had dodged questions about subpoenaing Lutnick.
Asked
at the time if his committee had any plans to subpoena the Commerce
Secretary, Comer instead replied, "Well, we're going to try to get these
five [witnesses] nailed down. We've got a lot of very important people
we're trying to bring in to answer questions."
On Thursday, the question came up again, and Comer offered reporters a different perspective.
Asked
if "in the spirit of bipartisanship" he would request Lutnick testify,
Comer replied it was "very possible, and I think it's a good possibility
his name will arise on some questioning today" as the Committee deposes
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The
chairman’s suggestion that Lutnick could soon be facing a congressional
subpoena comes after weeks of increased scrutiny of his relationship
with Epstein, his onetime next-door neighbor in New York, after
documents released by the Justice Department showed that he’d lied
during an interview with the New York Post in October when he’d claimed
to have cut off contact with Epstein after a 2005 encounter that he
claimed had left him so unsettled that he’d vowed to “never be in the
room with that disgusting person ever again.”
As Ben notes this morning on MEDIASNEWS NETWORK, photos emerged yesterday of Lutnick on Epstein's island, having the time of his life. Years after he insisted he'd broken with Epstein, years after the 'grossed out' moment he and his wife supposedly had when they visited their neighbor Epstein and saw things that turned their stomachs, things that made them both agree to never again have anything to do with Epstein.
Let's note this from Senator Patty Murray's office:
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA),
a senior member and the former chair on the Senate Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, issued the following statement on
the Trump administration’s moves to roll back worker protections. Today,
the Trump nominee-packed National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
announced its decision to formalize the return of the first Trump
administration’s joint employer rule. This coincides with this morning’s
announcement from the Department of Labor of its intent to rescind the
Biden Administration’s employee and independent contractor
classification rule.
“Every day, little by little, the Trump administration is
rigging the system to benefit giant corporations and shortchange
workers—it’s an outright grift and working people should be furious. The
joint employer rule is nothing more than a return to Trump’s
anti-worker policies that let giant corporations skirt their basic
obligations to employees—Trump is giving the biggest corporations cover
to deny workers their ability to band together for better wages and
working conditions and leaving millions of workers in the lurch,
vulnerable to egregious violations of their rights.
“At the same time, today, the Trump administration announced
they’re working to rescind the independent contractor rule. Trump wants
to let giant corporations classify workers as contractors so that they
don’t have to pay them minimum wage and overtime—these workers deserve
fair pay.
“Under the Trump administration, giant corporations get giant
tax breaks paid for by cutting Medicaid—the health care that the
poorest workers are forced to rely on. Now, Trump wants those same
corporations off the hook for every benefit, protection, and dollar
they’d otherwise owe to millions of workers—it’s a shakedown.
Republicans are proving time and again, they don’t care about
workers—they don’t want to even let workers have crumbs, but
billionaires can get trillions in tax breaks that will blow up our
national debt. I am going to keep fighting for laws on the books that
protect workers and build an economy that grows the middle-class, not
just profit margins for the largest corporations on earth.”
Senator Murray has long led efforts in Congress to shield against
employee misclassification and protect workers’ rights. In January of
last year, Senator Murray forcefully condemned
President Trump’s illegal firing of NLRB Member Gwynne Wilcox and the
firing of Jennifer Abruzzo—Murray has consistently called for the
immediate reinstatement of Wilcox and condemned Trump’s move as a breach
of the NLRB’s independence. Senator Murray is fighting to pass—and is the original Senate author of—the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act,
which, among other things, would close loopholes that allow employers
to misclassify their employees and deny them protections under the law.
Among many other pieces of pro-worker legislation, Murray also leads
the Wage Theft Prevention and Wage Recovery Act, to fight wage theft and protect workers hard earned wages, and the Paycheck Fairness Act to
combat wage discrimination and help close the pay gap, and has helped
lead the fight for paid family and medical leave since she first joined
Congress. Most recently, Senator Murray reintroduced her Bringing an End to Harassment by Enhancing Accountability and Rejecting Discrimination (BE HEARD) in the Workplace Act, in
response to Trump and Andrea Lucas, Chair of the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission (EEOC), eliminating workplace anti-harassment
guidance and attacking transgender workers for using the locker rooms, bathrooms, and private spaces. BE HEARD
takes critical steps to address workplace harassment, protects against
discrimination based on gender identity and sexuality, and ensures
workers can seek accountability and justice.
In December 2023, Senator Murray led 21
of her colleagues in a letter in support of the Biden Administration’s
proposed rule to reinstate the joint-employer standard and she fought
efforts to weaken the historic joint-employer standard under the
previous administration at every step of the way. She continuously opposed the first Trump administration’s attempt to overturn the historic standard and ledhercolleagues in opposing its rule eroding the standard, which was finalized in 2020.
###
And we'll note this from THE BLACK COMMENTATOR:
Cover Story The Rotunda Is Too Small for the Reverend Jesse
Jackson By Dr. Julianne Malveaux, PhD
