FFormer US President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, a former secretary of state, testified for more than nine hours last week about the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and the public can now see their testimony before a Republican-led congressional committee.

The statements happened in their Chappaqua, N.Y., hometown and included questions about Epstein — who died in a New York prison in 2019 shortly after he was indicted — and Ghislaine Maxwell, his friend who is now serving a lengthy prison sentence on a federal sex-trafficking conviction.

Here’s a look at what we learned, focusing mostly on the 42nd president’s testimony. Hillary Clinton has testified that she never met Epstein and there has never been a credible report to contradict that claim.

No knowledge of crimes, no police interviews

In an introductory statement that he made publicBill Clinton said he didn’t know about Epstein’s crimes when the two knew each other and that if he had known, “I would have reported him myself.” He added at various times Friday that he never saw any inappropriate behavior on Epstein’s plane or any of the girls he thought were minors.

Overall, Clinton’s testimony did not deviate greatly either from what he wrote about the relationship with Epstein in the 2024 book or from Maxwell’s own interviews with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche last summer from prison.

“I didn’t see that President Clinton was interested in Epstein,” Maxwell said. “(Epstein) was just a rich man with an airplane.”

WATCH | Bill Clinton’s testimony:

Clinton also set the parameters of the relationship as transactional. He said a mutual contact, Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary, informed him that Epstein was willing to lend his plane for use while Clinton sought to establish his fledgling foundation in early 2001.

In exchange, Epstein wanted some face-to-face time to discuss issues, Clinton said. Those conversations, the former president recalled, included topics such as derivatives markets and financial regulations and the prospects for prosperity in Africa.

“He asked about the economy and politics as he said he would, and he never asked me anything unsolicited,” Clinton said, noting that foundation staff and the US Secret Service accompanied him on the plane ride.

Epstein was indicted in Florida in 2007 on charges that led to a conviction the following year on state charges of solicitation of prostitution of a person under the age of 18. Clinton said that given their contacts, he was somewhat surprised that the authorities did not contact him either then or later.

“I don’t believe any law enforcement agency has ever asked me, and I don’t know enough to offer anything,” Clinton told the committee.

As for the end of the relationship, which he said was in 2003, Clinton said Epstein didn’t seem overly interested in his global health initiatives and that others he knew better also offered to help drive him to destinations.

“I thought I did what I promised and he did what he promised,” Clinton said.

As for widespread theories that Epstein could have been a foreign service intelligence agent, Clinton said he would be surprised if that was the case.

Context for published photos

Both Clintons said the relationship with Maxwell lasted a number of years, as she did in her prison interview. Maxwell said she was in a relationship for about seven years with Clinton friend and CTO Ted Waitt, and the former president said she was also interested in Clinton’s early global initiative efforts.

In a photo released as part of the millions of documents lost under the Epstein File Transparency Act at the end of 2025, Clinton is shown in a pool with Maxwell and at least one other unidentified person.

Clinton said that on a long plane trip on the way to Asia, there was a stopover in Brunei. The country’s sultan, whom Clinton knew when he was US president, encouraged the traveling entourage to relax after the flight by their hotel’s pool.

“I swam around. I sat in the hot tub for five minutes or whatever it was. I got up and went to bed,” he said.

Clinton added that a member of the Secret Service was near the pool, and his lawyers alluded to a separate photo that exists showing several people swimming.

In another photo that was recently released, Clinton is seen giving a massage to a young woman in an airport waiting room. By all accounts, the woman is Chauntae Davies, a former flight attendant on a private jet who years later said that Epstein victimized her.

When asked by Democratic Rep. Melanie Stansbury if he now regrets the photo, Clinton first tried to dismiss the image of an innocent massage, with two fully clothed people.

“She wants to know if I feel bad about it. Yes,” he told one of his lawyers. “I wish Chauntae had told me,” he added. – I liked her.

‘I don’t remember’

Clinton in public life has charged with evasionbut he predicted in his introductory statement that “you will often hear me say that I do not remember.”

This happened, and one such questioning included whether he was shown the bed on Epstein’s plane.

Although Clinton appeared focused and aware during Friday’s sessions, there were several occasions when he looked like a nearly 80-year-old man, his voice shaky and his hands shaking.

His lawyers often reinterpreted questions or explained their reasons to him. Trying to recall his frequent travels, he wondered aloud whether the devastating Asian tsunami had occurred in 2001 or 2002, clearly referring to the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami that occurred in late December 2004.

Victim’s charges dismissed

Clinton disputed the allegations, which were passed on by lawmakers and were originally made by the late Virginia Giuffre and Maria Farmer, who said they were victims of Epstein.

The farmer reported to police that she knew Clinton was at Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico, and Giuffre said he had visited Epstein’s property in the Caribbean. Clinton emphasized that he never visited the location of St. Thomas, but offered a more qualified “I don’t remember doing that” regarding any visits to the ranch.

Those inclined to doubt Clinton might point to the fact that in early 1998 he also denied having a sexual relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky while ousted in a civil suit filed by Paula Jones — which would have been among the statements that led to his impeachment. Clinton has faced a series of accusations of womanizing or sexual harassment, mostly in the 1980s and 1990s, with Jones claiming he exposed himself to her in a hotel while he was governor of Arkansas.

As for Giuffre, while she helped uncover Epstein’s crimes and former Prince Andrew’s relationship with Epstein, she also once made a false accusation of sexual abuse she had to publicly withdraw including high-profile attorney Alan Dershowitz.

The Trump-Epstein story remains unclear

A Washington Post report traces the origins of the Trump-Epstein split back to late 2004 and a real estate plot in Florida.

Clinton made a similar point when he said he spoke briefly with US President Donald Trump about Epstein at a charity golf tournament hosted by former New York Yankees manager Joe Torre.

“He said they both wanted the same piece of land. He didn’t say what it was, and that’s all I remember,” Clinton said, adding that the conversation did not include any discussion of sex or women. But the former president described the conversation with the future president as in 2002 or 2003, long before the real estate auction.

Trump offered a different explanation last year, saying Epstein had “stole” female employees from his Florida estate and had failed to heed warnings to stop.

“People were taken from the spa — which he hired — in other words, disappeared,” Trump said. “And then not long after that, (Epstein) did it again. And I said, ‘Get out of here.’

To further confuse things, a book from 2020 Club of Crooks: Trump, Mar-a-Lago, and Selling the Presidency states that Epstein was barred from visiting Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in 2007 due to allegations of an inappropriate exchange with a teenage girl.

The video of the hearing behind closed doors was published

The Clintons spent weeks negotiating with Republican committee chairman James Comer, wanting a public hearing so their testimony wouldn’t be misconstrued.

While that desire was understandable, it’s also true that Hillary Clinton knows firsthand how public congressional hearings can turn into a spectacle — with big-ticket comments from several lawmakers carried live by news networks like she once did. he sat for nearly 12 hours at a 2015 congressional hearing in the attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

WATCH | Hillary Clinton’s impeachment got off to a rocky start after the photos leaked:

But with a few exceptions — for example, she exploded last week after her photo was leaked and was startled to be asked by a Republican about the near-fatal Pizzagate conspiracy theory — the testimony was largely professional and straightforward, with no shouting and lawyers sometimes interrupting to clarify questions.

The contrast was also seen recently in how a mostly quiet closed-door session with former special prosecutor Jack Smith, compared to a more contentious public debate.

With video of their testimony released within two business days, the Clintons can now be seen and heard without acting from Capitol Hill.