Hillary Clinton sat for a BBC interview in Berlin on Monday and accused Donald Trump of orchestrating a "cover-up" regarding the Jeffrey Epstein files. In the same breath, the former secretary of state waved away her own husband's well-documented ties to the deceased financier, insisting Bill Clinton's multiple flights on Epstein's private jet were simply part of his "charitable work."

Both Clintons have been ordered to give closed-door depositions before the House Oversight Committee. Hillary is scheduled for February 26. Bill follows the next day.

The 78-year-old former presidential candidate wants you to know she has nothing to hide. She also wants you to look somewhere else.

The Berlin performance

Clinton's BBC interview was a masterclass in the kind of deflection that has defined Clinton-era crisis management for three decades, the Daily Mail reported. She opened by demanding the release of more Epstein-related material:

Get the files out. They are slow-walking it.

She then pivoted to framing the entire investigation as a political ploy aimed at distracting the public:

Look at this shiny object. We're going to have the Clintons, even Hillary Clinton, who never met the guy.

Clinton claims she never met Jeffrey Epstein, never flew on his plane, and never visited his island. She acknowledged meeting Ghislaine Maxwell, the Epstein associate convicted of conspiring to sexually abuse minors, "on a few occasions." Maxwell, of course, attended Chelsea Clinton's wedding in New York in 2010.

Just a casual acquaintance who scored an invite to the family wedding.

Bill Clinton and the plane rides nobody wants to discuss

The more uncomfortable half of this story belongs to Bill Clinton. The 79-year-old former president features frequently in the Epstein files and has acknowledged flying on Epstein's plane in the early 2000s. Hillary addressed this with the kind of studied casualness that should make any reporter's ears perk up:

We have a very clear record we're willing to talk about. My husband has said he took some rides on his airplane for his charitable work

"Some rides." "Charitable work." The framing does a lot of heavy lifting. Bill Clinton says he never visited Epstein's private island. That claim now sits alongside over three million documents, photos, and videos that the Justice Department released last month from its Epstein investigation.

Critics say only a fraction of the material is actually public. Names of powerful figures were redacted in the release, while those identified as affected persons were left exposed. The DOJ insists it has nothing more to hand over.

So to recap: the government released millions of pages, redacted the powerful, exposed the vulnerable, and now says the cupboard is bare. And Hillary Clinton's complaint is that the other side isn't being transparent enough.

The 'fairness' gambit

Clinton told the BBC she and Bill would comply with the House Oversight Committee's deposition orders, but she made sure to lay down conditions in the court of public opinion first:

We will show up but we think it would be better to have it in public.

I just want it to be fair. I want everybody treated the same way.

This is a familiar Clinton play. Agree to cooperate, then immediately frame the process as unfair before it even begins. If the depositions produce damaging testimony, the groundwork is already laid: it was a setup, it wasn't fair, it should have been public so "everyone could see."

The demand for public testimony sounds like a call for transparency. It functions as a negotiating tactic. Public hearings let witnesses play to cameras. Closed-door depositions, by contrast, tend to produce more candid answers and fewer rehearsed speeches. The Oversight Committee chose the format that historically yields better results. The Clintons prefer the one that historically yields better optics.

The real question the Committee is asking

The House Oversight Committee isn't conducting a criminal trial. It is probing Epstein's connections to powerful figures and, critically, how information about his crimes was handled by the institutions that were supposed to pursue justice. That second part matters more than any single name in any single flight log.

Jeffrey Epstein died in a Manhattan jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. The circumstances of his death remain a source of deep public skepticism. His operation touched celebrities, politicians, academics, and financiers across party lines. The question isn't just who flew where. It's who knew what, who looked away, and who made sure certain doors stayed closed.

Trump told reporters Monday evening that he had been "totally exonerated." His name appears in the Epstein files, as do many others. Appearance in the files does not constitute evidence of criminal conduct.

The Clintons' posture, however, tells its own story. They are not simply cooperating. They are cooperating while simultaneously running a media campaign to preemptively discredit the process, redirect attention, and minimize the significance of Bill Clinton's documented association with a convicted sex trafficker's operation.

Transparency for thee

There is something almost admirable about the audacity of it. Hillary Clinton, from a television studio in Berlin, demands full transparency on the Epstein files while describing her husband's flights on the plane the public has come to know as the Lolita Express as mere charity errands. She insists she never met Epstein while acknowledging a social relationship with his convicted co-conspirator. She calls for fairness while pre-spinning the narrative before a single question has been asked under oath.

The Clintons have spent decades perfecting this formula:

• Claim full willingness to cooperate
• Set impossible conditions for what "fair" cooperation looks like
• Blame the investigators when cooperation gets uncomfortable
• Repeat

February 26 and 27 will test whether the formula still works. The House Oversight Committee has the subpoena power. It has the documents. And it has two witnesses who say they have nothing to hide but can't seem to stop talking about how unfair it all is.

People with nothing to hide don't usually need a press tour in Berlin to say so.