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Trump Says ‘I Don’t Like’ That Bill Clinton Was Deposed Over Epstein But ‘They Went After Me a Lot More’
President Donald Trump said Friday that he was against making former President Bill Clinton sit for a deposition about Jeffrey Epstein while adding “they certainly went after me a lot more.”
Trump addressed reporters at the White House before a trip to Texas on Friday, according to Mediaite, criticizing Congress for deposing Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, about sex criminal and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Trump again claimed that he had been “fully exonerated” and didn’t know “anything about the Epstein files.”
“I don’t like seeing him deposed, but they certainly went after me a lot more than that,” Trump said about Bill Clinton. “I like him and I don’t like seeing him deposed.”
READ MORE: Rogan on Epstein Files: ‘Looks Terrible’ for Trump
Though the depositions are closed-door, Clinton released the text of his opening statement to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on X.
As someone who grew up in a home with domestic abuse, not only would I not have flown on his plane if I had any inkling of what he was doing—I would have turned him in myself and led the call for justice for his crimes, not sweetheart deals. pic.twitter.com/0rX8cat5Pu
— Bill Clinton (@BillClinton) February 27, 2026
In the statement, Clinton says that he “had no idea of the crimes Epstein was committing.”
“No matter how many photos you show me, I have two things that at the end of the day matter more than your interpretation of those 20-year-old photos. I know what I saw, and more importantly what I didn’t see. I know what I did, and more importantly, what I didn’t do. I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong.”
Clinton admits to flying on Epstein’s plane, nicknamed “The Lolita Express,” but says he cut contact with Epstein sometime before 2009. Epstein was first convicted in 2008 of procuring a minor for prostitution.
Clinton has previously said he never visited Epstein’s private island, Little St. James, according to a public statement released by Angel Ureña, his deputy chief of staff, in 2019.
Statement on Jeffrey Epstein. pic.twitter.com/98ha9YYd1l
— Angel Ureña (@angelurena) July 8, 2019
However, Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre said in 2011 she had seen Clinton on the island sometime between 1999-2001.
“I’d have been about 17 at the time. I flew to the Caribbean with Jeffrey and then Ghislaine Maxwell went to pick up Bill in a huge black helicopter that Jeffrey had bought her,” she told the Daily Mail at the time.
In an interview for the 2020 Netflix documentary Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, Giuffre said “I never saw [Clinton] do anything improper.” But in her 2011 Daily Mail interview, she denies Clinton’s claim that he knew nothing of what was going on.
“Bill must have known about Jeffrey’s girls. There were three desks in the living area of the villa on the island. They were covered with pictures of Jeffrey shaking hands with famous people and photos of naked girls, including one of me that Jeffrey had at all his houses, lying in a hammock,” she said.
In an interview with her lawyer Jack Scarola in 2011—submitted as evidence in her 2015 lawsuit against Epstein confidante Ghislaine Maxwell and unsealed in 2019—Giuffre alleged that during Clinton’s visit to Little St. James, that in addition to Maxwell, Epstein, Giuffre and Clinton on the island, there were also “two young girls,” but no mention is made of any wrongdoing.
Guiffre died by suicide in 2025.
Two other witnesses say Clinton visited the island. Doug Band, Clinton’s former chief of staff, says Clinton visited the island in January 2003, according to a 2020 interview in Vanity Fair. However a Clinton spokesperson provided “detailed travelogue entries” of the time which did not back up Band’s statement. Band and Clinton had a falling out and had officially cut ties in 2015, according to the New York Post. Both Clintons have since criticized Band.
“No staffer has ever used their role to serve their interests as much as Doug Band,” a Clinton family spokesperson told Vanity Fair. “For many years he was a valuable member of President Clinton’s team and supportive of Clinton Foundation programs. Until he wasn’t. He put the foundation at risk by leveraging a world-class philanthropy for his own financial gain. It’s as disappointing a story as it is a sad one and ultimately why Doug Band and the Clintons parted ways.”
Steve Scully, who provided IT services to Epstein on Little St. James from 1999 to 2005, said in the Netflix documentary he saw Clinton there once during his employment.
“I saw Bill Clinton sitting with Jeffrey on the living-room porch area, which was Jeffrey’s favorite spot,” Scully said, according to New York magazine. “I saw no other guests there at that time at all. I just thought, ‘Hey, wow, Jeffrey’s sitting with Bill Clinton.’”
Ureña denies Scully’s account, telling New York, “This was a lie the first time it was told, and it isn’t true today, no matter how many times it’s repeated.”
Image via Reuters
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
