Bill Clinton says he 'did nothing wrong' with Epstein as he faces grilling over their relationship

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Bill Clinton told members of Congress on Friday that he “did nothing wrong” in his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and saw no signs of his abuse, yet he faced hours of grilling from lawmakers over his connections to the disgraced financier from more than two decades ago.

“I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong,” the former Democratic president said in an opening statement he shared on social media at the outside of the deposition.

The closed-door deposition in Chappaqua, New York, marks the first time a former president has been compelled to testify to Congress. It came a day after Clinton's wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sat with lawmakers for her own deposition.

Bill Clinton has also not been accused of any wrongdoing. Yet lawmakers are grappling with what accountability in the United States looks like at a time when men around the world have been toppled from their high-powered posts for maintaining their connections with Epstein after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges in Florida for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.

“Men — and women for that matter — of great power and great wealth from all across the world have been able to get away with a lot of heinous crimes and they haven’t been held accountable and they have not even had to answer questions,” said Republican Rep. James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, before the deposition began Friday.

Hillary Clinton told lawmakers Thursday that she had no knowledge of how Epstein had sexually abused underage girls and had no recollection of even meeting him. But Bill Clinton will have to answer questions on a well-documented relationship with Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, even if it was from the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Hillary Clinton said Thursday that she expected her husband to testify that he had no knowledge of Epstein's sexual abuse at the time they knew each other.

Republicans were relishing the opportunity to scrutinize the former Democratic president under oath.

“No one’s accusing anyone of any wrongdoing, but I think the American people have a lot of questions,” Comer said.

Republicans have wanted to question Bill Clinton about Epstein for years, especially as conspiracy theories arose following Epstein's 2019 suicide in a New York jail cell while he faced sex trafficking charges.

Those calls reached a fever pitch late last year when several photos of the former president surfaced in the Department of Justice's first release of case files on Epstein and Maxwell, a British socialite who was convicted of sex trafficking in December 2021 but maintains she's innocent. Bill Clinton was photographed on a plane seated alongside a woman, whose face is redacted, with his arm around her. Another photo showed Clinton and Maxwell in a pool with another person whose face was redacted.

Epstein also visited the White House several times during Clinton's presidency, and the pair later made several international trips together for their humanitarian work. Comer claimed the committee has collected evidence that Epstein visited the White House 17 times and that Bill Clinton flew on Epstein's airplane 27 times.

In the lead-up to the deposition, Bill Clinton has insisted he had limited knowledge about Epstein and was unaware of any sexual abuse he committed.

“I think the chronology of the connection that he had with Epstein ended several years before anything about Epstein's criminal activities came to light,” Hillary Clinton said at the conclusion of her deposition Thursday.

Comer has pledged extensive questioning of the former president. He claimed that Hillary Clinton had repeatedly deferred questions about Epstein to her husband.

The committee was working to publish a transcript and video recording of her deposition.

Democrats, who have supported the push to get answers from Bill Clinton, are arguing that it sets a precedent that should also apply to President Donald Trump, a Republican who had his own relationship with Epstein.

“I think that President Trump needs to man up, get in front of this committee and answer the questions and stop calling this investigation a hoax,” said Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the committee, on Friday.

Comer has pushed back on that idea, saying that Trump has answered questions on Epstein from the press.

Democrats are also calling for the resignation of Trump's Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Lutnick was a longtime neighbor of Epstein in New York City but said on a podcast that he severed ties with Epstein following a 2005 tour of Epstein’s home that disturbed Lutnick and his wife.

The public release of case files showed that Lutnick actually had two engagements with Epstein years later. He attended a 2011 event at Epstein's home, and in 2012 his family had lunch with Epstein on his private island.

“He should be removed from office and at a minimum should come before the committee,” Garcia said of Lutnick.

Republican Rep. Nancy Mace questioned Hillary Clinton about Lutnick's relationship to Epstein during the deposition on Thursday. On Friday morning, Mace joined in calling for the commerce secretary to come before the committee.

“I believe we will have the votes to subpoena him,” Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna said.

Follow the AP's coverage of Jeffrey Epstein at https://apnews.com/hub/jeffrey-epstein.

A motorcade carrying former President Bill Clinton approaches the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center where Clinton is scheduled to testify before U.S. House lawmakers as part of a congressional investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026, in Chappaqua, N.Y. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)

Demonstrators walk around outside the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center while awaiting the arrival of former President Bill Clinton who is testifying before U.S. House lawmakers as part of a congressional investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, , Friday, Feb. 27, 2026, in Chappaqua, N.Y. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks outside the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center, after testifying before U.S. House lawmakers as part of a congressional investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026, in Chappaqua, N.Y. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

FILE - President Clinton sits with first lady Hillary Clinton during a campaign rally in San Antonio, Nov. 2, 1996. (AP Photo/Greg Gibson, file)

FILE - Former President Bill Clinton speaks in the Cash Room of the Treasury Department during an event for the anniversary of the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund,, Nov. 21, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

KOYA, Iraq (AP) — Public tensions have surfaced between the exiled son of Iran’s last shah and a coalition of Kurdish Iran dissident groups in recent days.

The frictions have highlighted cracks in the Iranian opposition in the wake of mass anti-government protests and a brutal crackdown and as the country faces a potential war if negotiations with the U.S. to reach a nuclear deal fail.

On Sunday, five Kurdish groups announced the formation of the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan. The group said in a statement that it aims to “struggle for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran, to achieve the Kurdish people’s right to self-determination, and to establish a national and democratic entity based on the political will of the Kurdish nation in Iranian Kurdistan.”

The statement drew condemnation from the crown prince, Reza Pahlavi, who has been in exile for nearly 50 years and is now trying to position himself for a return should Iran’s Shiite theocracy fall.

Despite their common interest in bringing about the ouster of the country’s current rulers, there is little love lost between Pahlavi and the Kurds. During the rule of Pahlavi’s father, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Kurds were marginalized and repressed. Pahlavi and his supporters, meanwhile, have accused Kurdish groups of wanting to carve up Iran.

After the Kurdish groups announced their alliance, Pahlavi wrote on X, “In recent days, several separatist groups — some of whose records include collaboration with both Khomeini and Saddam — have made baseless and contemptible claims against the territorial integrity and national unity of Iran.” He was referring to the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, and former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

He added that “Iran’s territorial integrity is the ultimate red line.”

The Kurdish coalition called Pahlavi's comments “hysterical and hateful” and said his family's dynasty was known for the “massacre of civilians and suppression of democratic freedoms of the Iranian people, especially the oppressed nations of this country.”

“Why do they think that people oppressed by the dictatorship of the Islamic Republic are willing to bow to him and other like-minded people as part of the alternative for the future Iran?” it said.

After Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, its fledgling theocracy battled Kurdish insurgents. Iranian forces destroyed Kurdish towns and villages in fighting that killed thousands over several months.

“We have been through ethnic cleansing and persecution and dictatorship (both) under the Pahlavi regime and under the Islamic Republic," said Karim Parwizi, a senior official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran, one of the groups forming the new alliance.

He spoke to The Associated Press in an interview at a camp housing the group's members in northern Iraq on Thursday.

Referring to Pahlavi, he said that should the theocracy fall, “There’s a threat of fascism returning to Iran, and we’re thinking about how to prevent that from happening.”

A handful of Iranian Kurdish dissident or separatist groups — some with armed wings — have long found a safe haven in northern Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region.

At least one of them, the Kurdistan Freedom Party, or PAK, has publicly claimed attacks on Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in retaliation for Tehran’s violent crackdown on protests last month.

Parwizi was careful to say that the new alliance has not yet come to a decision to launch armed operations inside of Iran, maintaining that their armed wings are for defensive purposes.

And he denied that the alliance’s aim is to carve out a separate Kurdish state.

“Every ethnic group should have their land, but we haven’t requested this and we haven’t requested to divide Iran,” he said. “We need to work with other ethnic groups to make sure that there will be a place for all of us in the new Iran.”

It’s difficult to gauge support for Pahlavi inside Iran, but some of the biggest protests in years broke out in early January after he called people to the streets, and in videos of recent student protests, some demonstrators could be heard chanting in support of him.

Mehrzad Boroujerdi, an Iran expert and vice provost at Missouri University of Science and Technology, said the open rancor between Pahlavi and the Kurdish groups is a setback to attempts to form a unified Iranian opposition.

“With his open denunciation of these Kurdish groups, I think (Pahlavi) is shooting himself in the foot in that sense, because the Kurds are going to be really an integral part of any serious opposition,” he said.

He noted that the perceptions that he is unable to appeal to all of Iran’s opposition groups have already harmed Pahlavi’s attempts to win support from Washington.

“President (Donald) Trump, for example, was not willing to personally meet with him and sort of validate his campaign because of serious concerns that, this guy, if he is not able to unify the opposition now before there is a regime collapse, how is he going to do that after the fact?” he said.

The Kurdish groups have their own contacts and lobbying operations in Washington. Parwizi said they have been in communication with the U.S. State Department and members of Congress to seek political support for their cause but denied receiving any U.S. funding.

Sewell reported from Beirut.

Members of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan PDKI stand at a checkpoint leading to their base in the Koya district of Irbil, Iraq, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Rashid Yahya)

Members of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan PDKI stand at a checkpoint leading to their base in the Koya district of Irbil, Iraq, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Rashid Yahya)

Iran's exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, speaks to supporters at a demonstration during the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Karim Parwizi, member of the leadership council of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, PDKI, gives an interview in Irbil, Iraq, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Rashid Yahya)