In a sharply worded interview in Berlin, Hillary Clinton accused President Donald Trump’s administration of concealing material linked to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“Get the files out. They are slow-walking it,” Mrs Clinton told the BBC, as she attended the World Forum in the German capital.
Her remarks land at a moment of renewed scrutiny over the government’s handling of records tied to Epstein, who died in a New York jail in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide. Years earlier, he had pleaded guilty in Florida to soliciting prostitution from a minor and was registered as a sex offender.
Earlier this month, the Justice Department released millions of pages of material following passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a law requiring disclosure of investigative records. The department says it has now complied fully with the statute. Some lawmakers disagree.
Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican who co-wrote the measure, has called for additional documents, including internal memoranda detailing charging decisions involving Epstein and his associates.
The White House rejected Mrs Clinton’s claims. In a statement, officials said the administration had “done more for the victims than Democrats ever have” by releasing thousands of pages and co-operating with congressional subpoenas. The statement also noted that Mr Trump had recently urged further investigations into Epstein’s associates.
Mr Trump, speaking aboard Air Force One, told the BBC he had “nothing to hide”.
“I’ve been exonerated. I had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein,” he said. “They went in hoping that they’d find it, and they found just the opposite.”
He added that Democrats were themselves “getting pulled in”.
Epstein’s network reached into political and social circles on both sides of the Atlantic. Among those who have faced questions is Bill Clinton, who appears multiple times in the released files. The former president has said he cut ties with Epstein more than two decades ago and was unaware of his crimes. Neither he nor Mrs Clinton has been accused of wrongdoing by Epstein’s victims.
The Clintons are due to testify before the House Oversight Committee later this month. It will mark the first time since Gerald Ford appeared before a congressional panel in 1983 that a former American president has done so.
A planned vote to hold the Clintons in contempt of Congress was dropped after they agreed to appear. They have asked for the hearing to be public rather than conducted behind closed doors.
“We will show up, but we think it would be better to have it in public,” Mrs Clinton said. “I just want it to be fair. I want everybody treated the same way.”
She suggested that attention on her and her husband was meant to distract from scrutiny of Mr Trump. “Look at this shiny object,” she said. “We’re going to have the Clintons, even Hillary Clinton, who never met the guy.”
Mrs Clinton acknowledged that she had encountered Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former associate who was convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking offences, “on a few occasions”.
Mr Trump is mentioned numerous times in the released documents. He has denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crime related to Epstein. The Justice Department has previously stated that some documents contain unverified and false claims submitted shortly before the 2020 election. Officials said that if credible evidence had existed, it would have been pursued.
Pressure is also mounting on Prince Andrew, who has faced calls from some American lawmakers and from the family of his accuser, Virginia Giuffre, to testify before Congress. The Duke of York has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and reached an out-of-court settlement with Ms Giuffre in 2022, without admitting liability. Ms Giuffre died in 2025.
For now, both parties appear to be bracing for a public reckoning. Mrs. Clinton insists that full disclosure is the only way forward.
“We think sunlight is the best disinfectant,” she said.
Whether that light will satisfy critics ,or deepen partisan fault lines , remains to be seen.
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