During a recent deposition before the House Oversight Committee, former President Bill Clinton told lawmakers that recently discovered photos of him in a pool with deceased convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s former flame and partner in crime, Ghislaine Maxwell, along with the infamous hot tub image, were all taken at a hotel in Brunei and have no connections to sexual misconduct.
A video clip from the deposition is going viral on social media, showing Clinton staring so long at the hot tub photo that his attorney has to take it away. He then goes on to fight with her to look at it again, all the while grinning from ear to ear and laughing as he seemingly conjures up memories of the event in his mind. One user who shared the photo captioned it, “Great optic,” pointing out that his conduct in the clip is less than becoming.
When asked if he participated in any sexual activity with the woman in the hot tub image, he answered, “No.” The identity of the woman in the photo was redacted for her protection. The Justice Department is required by law to release any and all documents and images related to Epstein, but must censor information that could identify Epstein’s victims.
According to a report from Fox News, Clinton stated that his stay at the hotel was the result of an invitation extended to him by the kingdom’s sultan, an individual the former president said he met during his time in office. “It’s a tiny place but a very wealthy one, and the sultan was a man I had gotten to know well in my eight years as president and his involvement with the Asia-Pacific leaders conference, which I started and which he attended,” Clinton told lawmakers.
Brunei is an island kingdom located near the country of Indonesia. “When he knew I was coming, he invited me to stay there. And he said, ‘I want you to stay at this hotel, and I hope that you’ll use the pool.’ So, I did, and then I got out and went to bed, exhausted,” Clinton recounted. The former president told the House Oversight Committee that while he remembered that both Epstein and Maxwell joined him at the resort, he could not recall who else was with them.
Clinton provided no additional details as to why Epstein and Maxwell joined him on the excursion. He then told the committee that, to the best of his recollection, none of the individuals at the pool that evening were minors. He did say, however, that he believed everyone who was there at the time was part of their party and stated that there was a Secret Service agent there as well.
The former president made his appearance before congressional lawmakers as part of an ongoing investigation into Epstein and his crimes. Epstein, a powerful and well-connected billionaire, died behind bars in 2019 as he awaited trial for charges of sex trafficking underage girls. While Clinton is prominently featured in a number of photos with Epstein that have been released by the Justice Department, he claims to have had no knowledge of the billionaire’s crimes, nor participated in them.
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“I don’t think there was anyone else in that hot tub. I had forgotten there was anyone in the hot tub,” Clinton went on to say during the deposition before the committee. “I don’t think I ever knew the photo was taken.” One commenter under the viral clip pointed out that Clinton’s denial should be taken with a grain of salt due to lying in the past. “My favorite part of the deposition is when Billy said he’s never lied under oath. Ummm, WTF do you think you were impeached for? Only a Clinton would lie about lying.”
Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video