Hillary Clinton, the wife of former U.S. president Bill Clinton, a former secretary of state and a 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, said Saturday night that the latest-released batch of the Epstein files was “horrifying,” after several embarrassing photos of her husband were included in the materials, among them an image of him in a hot tub alongside a man whose face was blurred out.
Asked at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) about the millions of documents that were released, Clinton expressed alarm and said the files must be “totally transparent."
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Hillary Clinton at the Munich Security Conference
(Photo: Johannes Simon/Getty Images Europe)
"I've called for many, many years for everything to be put out there so people can not only see what is in them but also, if appropriate, hold people accountable,” Clinton said.
She added that what emerged from the released documents is “very troubling,” but cautioned that a person’s mere mention in the files does not necessarily indicate criminal conduct. “That doesn’t matter,” she said, as the embarrassing photos of her husband at Epstein’s estate circulated in the background. Bill Clinton, like many prominent figures and celebrities, maintained ties with the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender from the late 1990s to the early 2000s.
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A photo of Bill Clinton in a hot tub released as part of the Epstein files
(Photo: US Department of Justice/AFP)
Her remarks came after the Clintons agreed to testify before Congress regarding their ties to Epstein, following mounting pressure and months of confrontation with Republicans in the House of Representatives, including threats of a vote to hold them in contempt of Congress — an unprecedented step against a former president that could have paved the way for criminal charges. The vote was ultimately not held after the couple agreed to testify.
The connections between Clinton and Epstein have long been known. Bill Clinton has acknowledged flying on Epstein’s private jet but has said he was unaware of Epstein’s crimes. The U.S. Department of Justice released additional materials from the investigative files late last year, including embarrassing photos of the former president, with some images showing him alongside young women whose faces were blurred out. His appearance in the investigation files does not in itself indicate involvement in the sexual exploitation of minors or even suspicion of such conduct.
Epstein, a Jewish-American financier, was a close friend of President Donald Trump in the 1990s and early 2000s, until the two reportedly had a falling-out around 2004. Epstein was first convicted in 2008 of sex offenses involving a 14-year-old girl and received a lenient sentence of one year in custody under highly favorable conditions.
In 2019, the broader scope of his sexual exploitation of minors was exposed, with the assistance of his associate Ghislaine Maxwell. She was convicted of luring underage girls into Epstein's sex scheme and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Epstein was later found dead in his New York jail cell, in what authorities ruled a suicide. Since then, numerous conspiracy theories have circulated alleging a cover-up to protect prominent individuals with whom Epstein associated and who were alleged to have taken part in his crimes.
A spokesperson for Clinton said upon the release of the documents that the focus on the former Democratic president was an attempt to divert attention from other embarrassing details that, he claimed, the administration still seeks to conceal. “This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever. So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be,” he said.