Hillary Clinton accuses Trump administration of Epstein files 'cover-up' in BBC interview | BBC News

The former US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says she believes Andrew Mouse Button Windsor and anyone with any information about the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein should testify before Congress. In a BBC interview Mrs Clinton also said she and her husband Bill Clinton want their forthcoming testimony about Epstein to be public. The couple had previously refused to testify to the Epstein inquiry and were threatened with contempt proceedings. Former President Bill Clinton appears several times in the Epstein files that were released by the

US Justice Department last month. Mr. Clinton knew Epstein but has denied having any knowledge he was a sex offender and says he cut off contact with him two decades ago. Bill Clinton will appear in Congress for a deposition on the 27th of February and Hillary Clinton is set to appear the day before. Our Europe correspondent Jessica Parker sat down with Mrs. Clinton. Hillary Clinton, thank you for talking to BBC

News. I want to start off talking about the case of Jeffrey Epstein. You say you never met Jeffrey Epstein. Clearly your husband did know him. The former president says he knew him before his crimes came to light, but there are also associations with Ghislaine Maxwell, including in 2013 when she was a guest at a Clinton Global Initiative event, years after allegations had emerged against her.

What I want to know is, do you regret the links that there have been between Epstein Maxwell and the Clinton family?

Well, let me start by saying that a law was passed in Congress to require that all the files that have anything to do with them be released. And what we're seeing, I think it's fair to say, is a continuing cover-up by the Trump administration. In fact, when the Attorney General testified last week, it was quite a scene because she refused to answer questions, she diverted attention away

from the matters at hand, she refused to look at the survivors. So there's something about this administration's attitude toward this which I think really leads us to conclude they have something to hide. We don't. We have been willing to say whatever we know. We've even done it under oath. But they want us to testify, not everyone else who's mentioned many, many times, hundreds of thousands of times in these files. So we've said, fine, let us do it in public. And we will appear in public, and we'll

answer all your questions.

And we'll get to that in just a moment. But just to be clear, do you regret the links that there have been?

You know, we have no links. We have a very clear record that we've been willing to talk about, which my husband has said. He took some rides on the airplane for his charitable work. I don't recall ever meeting him.

Did you ever meet Elaine Maxwell?

I did on a few occasions and thousands of people go to the Clinton Global Initiative. So it to me is not something that is really at the heart of what this matter is about. They are accused and in both cases were convicted of horrific crimes against girls and women. That should be the focus. And we are more than happy to say what we know, which is very limited and totally unrelated to their behavior or

their crimes. And we want to do it in public, because let's make this transparent. The survivors deserve that, the public deserves that. But, you know, the Republican member of Congress who is running this hearing or this investigation is trying to protect the President. So let's get to

what's really at stake here. Just on this hearing and obviously I'm sure Donald Trump and his administration would reject your characterization of what's

going on and he's denied any wrongdoing. How can they reject it? They can't answer questions and the Attorney General was clearly unwilling to answer questions. She works for him. So let's be very clear here. According to what we now know, Mr. Trump, President Trump, is mentioned, some say, a million times in the files. People in his cabinet are mentioned.

She did not think it's correct?

That's what it says on the internet over and over again. So let's find out what the truth is. That's why we want it to be transparent and in public.

And on that, your upcoming appearance before the Oversight Committee, where are we with that? You want to appear in public, public versus closed-door deposition. Is it going ahead and how? What is the format going to be?

We will show up, but we think it would be better to have it in public because what we want is for everybody to get to the facts about this. We have nothing to hide. We have called for the full release of these files repeatedly. We think Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Get the files out. They are slow walking it. They are redacting the names of men who are in it. They are

stonewalling legitimate requests from members of Congress. That has nothing to do with us. Something is going on. They know it. I know it. If they're going to have me testify, I would prefer to do it in public because I want everybody to see it at the same time. If I have to do it behind closed doors, they're not going to like what I have to say because I have very strong opinions about what it is they're hiding and who they are protecting.

I just want to ask you, there are calls for another individual who denies wrongdoing to go before Congress on this matter. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew, do you think he should testify?

I think everybody should testify.

Well, including the former prince.

I think everybody should testify who was asked to testify. I just want it to be fair. I want everybody treated the same way. That's not true for my husband and me because other witnesses were asked to testify. They gave written statements under oath.

We offered that. They want to pull us – why did they want to pull us into this? To divert attention from President Trump. This is not complicated. This is so obvious and they keep trying to divert. Look at this shiny object.

We're going to have the Clintons, even Hillary Clinton, who never met the guy. We're going to have her there. Let's focus on what's really happening here. You have an attorney general and a Justice Department attempting to hide information that should be made public.

I just want to ask you, though, because as many people have said, being in the Epstein files does not mean that you've done anything wrong. But speaking for yourself and for your family, what was your reaction when you saw some of the material that

has been released? I'm thinking, for example, of images of your husband apparently in a hot tub in a swimming pool on Epstein's plane. What was your reaction to that? And do you know the context surrounding

some of those images? Absolutely and it wasn't a hot tub on a plane. It was one of the stops they made to look at philanthropic and charitable work that my husband has done saving literally millions of lives around the world. It turned out that was done long before there was any public awareness and certainly any conviction of any crime by Jeffrey Epstein. So it was a short period of time that was in pursuit of charitable philanthropic work.

A lot of people were travelling at the same time, many staff members, guests, other supporters of the foundation. If Bill and I had a penny for every person we've taken pictures with, we would be extremely rich today.

Let's move on to what we're seeing. You've just come from the Munich Security Conference. And a lot of people are talking about the idea of a new world order. I'm interested in your thoughts. In terms of transatlantic relations

to Europe and the United States, do you think they have permanently shifted, that there is no going back to the way things were before?

Well, I think time will tell whether we are going to support the rule of law, support the strong alliances that were forged through and after World War II, create an area of peace and security in the transatlantic or not. And as I said in Munich, I think that comes down to whether or not the people in America turn out,

Donald Trump and Republicans, who are more concerned about Putin than they are about democracy, and whether Europe stands against efforts to undermine the ties amongst European nations in favor of the rule of law, in favor of peace and security and against Putin.

So I'm hoping that the answers are the right answers. I'm hoping that people in Europe and people in the United States will stand up for universal values that have actually protected our peace and security now for more than 80 years.

When you look at the United States, would you still say it is a country that can be seen as the leader of the free world?

Well, it appears that Donald Trump wants to be the leader, but not necessarily of a free world. He is very enamored of Vladimir Putin, who is a dictator, brutal dictator.

He's also criticized him at times.

Donald Trump has never criticized Putin.

You can go back.

He's handling it great. No, no, you can go back and look, because many of us have done it, looking for one moment. You know, he said, come on, he needs to solve this. And what do we now hear?

That he and Putin want to profit off the death and misery of the Ukrainian people. So is that a leader? Well, I suppose if you count it in terms of military power, we are still the leader. But are we the leader in values?

Are we the leader in bringing people together? Are we the leader in trying to create hope and opportunity? I think that's an open question.

But Donald Trump's pressure has led, for example, to Europe spending more on defence, including here in Germany, which is something Americans have wanted for a long time. So

would you actually count that as a success?

Well there was a lot of pressure on the Europeans from previous presidents, and including in Trump's first term. And I think the real credit for that goes to Vladimir Putin. I think Vladimir Putin's aggressive behaviour, starting with Georgia, Crimea, and then the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has woken

up the Europeans, unlike anything anybody else could ever tell them. Obviously, Trump has pushed that. But it's the Europeans who finally have realized that Vladimir Putin is attempting to undermine European security and, left to his own devices, I believe, along with many other security experts, will threaten the independence of the Baltic states, Poland and elsewhere. So this is not just rhetorical push from the American president.

This is the cold reality that here in the 21st century we are dealing with a dictator who wants to dominate and control not

just Ukraine but Europe. My final question is on artificial intelligence. You believe that this should be regulated more firmly. How can that be done when you're looking at a kind of patchwork potentially of regulation

across the globe? I think if we don't regulate it, we will wake up as we are now with social media and regret it deeply. I think social media has had a very negative effect on our children. We have evidence of that. Evidence, sadly, that comes mostly from the tech companies,

because they follow very closely how to keep our kids addicted to social media. I applaud Macron in France. I applaud Sanchez in Spain, Australia and others who have woken up to the danger social media poses. It also undermines democracy because it undermines trust, it undermines unity, it undermines common effort,

and I think it will be on steroids with artificial intelligence.

How can artificial intelligence, if that's what you think should happen, how can that be done on a global scale?

Because, look at...

Do you need like a UN type body to do that?

Well, it has to start with individual nations as they are now with social media. But remember the European Union is the only serious regulator of technology in the world right now.

And you disagree with some people's view that that's very onerous, the regulation that they

have? Look, when we first started talking about putting seatbelts into cars because we had so many deaths from car accidents, The car makers complained, drivers complained, everybody complained. Who wants to have these straps over our body? We should be free in our cars.

And the regulators said, we're going to save lives. Now, I don't think Elon Musk should determine the future of either our children or civilization. Of course, he doesn't like it. But the Digital Services Act that the European Union passed is the only comprehensive effort to try to rein it in.

Now we're looking at artificial intelligence where even some of the creators of this new phenomenon have no idea what it's going to do to us. They know it's going to cost jobs. They know that it's going to kind of mess with people's heads through delusion and hallucination and all the rest that we already see happening.

But they don't know whether it's actually going to control our institutions. Can it take over our air traffic control system? Can it take over our electric grid? Can it do further damage to our democracy and our ability to can really govern ourselves? We don't know the answers to that. And people who were at

the birth of artificial intelligence like Geoffrey Hinton and others who were among the original creators are all saying, wait a minute, slow down. This is not just a big technological change. This is an existential a big technological change. This is an existential change in how human beings are going to be treated and treat each other and what's going to happen to us.

So I think it's a terrible example of negligence not to try to get into it and understand it better and require the tech companies to help us figure out what is the best way to make sure what is the best way to make sure that the worst of artificial intelligence doesn't happen.