00:00Mr. President, do you wish to provide an opening statement?
00:03I do. It's brief.
00:06First of all, good morning and welcome to all of you to our hometown.
00:14I appreciate you coming here.
00:18I'm here today basically for two reasons.
00:21First of all, I love my country and the Constitution,
00:27and I believe America was built on the idea that no one is above the law,
00:36especially presidents,
00:38and that we should all live by the same set of rules shaped by the Constitution.
00:45Democracy requires every person to play their part,
00:47and I hope that by being here today,
00:51we can bring ourselves a little further away from the brink
00:54and back to being a country where we can disagree civilly
00:59and search for the truth and justice,
01:02and that that outweighs the partisan urge for spectacle and point scoring.
01:08I will do my part, and I hope you'll do yours.
01:14The second reason I'm here is that the girls and women whose lives Jeffrey Epstein destroyed
01:20deserve not just justice, but healing.
01:24They've been waiting too long for both.
01:27Through my brief acquaintance with Jeffrey Epstein,
01:31though it ended years before his crimes came to light,
01:36and though I never witnessed during our limited interactions
01:40any indication of what was going on,
01:45I'm here to offer what little I know
01:50so I can do my part to prevent something like this from happening again.
01:57I have to just say one personal thing.
02:01Since Hillary came in yesterday,
02:04she had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein.
02:07Nothing.
02:11Can the witness please state her name for the record?
02:15Hillary Rodham Clinton.
02:18My name is Billy Grant.
02:19I am the Deputy Chief Counsel for Investigations for Chairman James Comer.
02:24If at any time you knowingly make false statements,
02:27you could be subject to criminal prosecution,
02:29including but not limited to, perjury, do you understand?
02:32I do.
02:33This includes both knowingly providing false testimony,
02:36but also stating that you do not recall or remember something
02:39when in fact you do.
02:42Mr. Major Wright-Han,
02:43do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony you're about to give
02:46in this deposition to be the true, the whole truth,
02:49and nothing but the truth?
02:50I do.
02:51Yep.
02:53As we all know, however,
02:55too often congressional investigations are partisan political theater,
02:59which is an abdication of duty and an insult to the American people.
03:04This committee justified its subpoena to me
03:07based on its assumption that I have information
03:09regarding the investigations into the criminal activities
03:13of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
03:20As I stated in my sworn declaration on January 13th,
03:25I had no idea about their criminal activities.
03:29I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein.
03:33I never flew on his plane or visited his island, homes, or offices.
03:39I have nothing to add to that.
03:42Like every decent person, I've been horrified by what we have learned about their crimes.
03:49It's unfathomable that Mr. Epstein initially got a slap on the wrist in 2008,
03:56which allowed him to continue his predatory practices for another decade.
04:02Mr. Chairman, your investigation is supposed to be assessing the federal government's handling
04:07of the investigations and prosecutions of Epstein and his crimes.
04:12You subpoenaed eight law enforcement officials,
04:15all of whom ran the Department of Justice or directed the FBI,
04:19when Epstein's crimes were investigated and prosecuted.
04:24Of those eight, only one appeared before the committee.
04:28Five of the six former attorneys general were allowed to submit brief statements
04:33stating they had no information to provide.
04:37You have held zero public hearings, refused to allow the media to attend them, including today,
04:44despite espousing the need for transparency on dozens of occasions.
04:49You have made little effort to call the people who show up most prominently in the Epstein files.
04:56And when you did, not a single Republican member showed up for Les Wexner's deposition.
05:04This institutional failure is designed to protect one political party and one public official,
05:11rather than to seek truth and justice for the victims and survivors,
05:16as well as inform the public who want to get to the bottom of this matter.
05:21My heart breaks for the survivors, and I am furious on their behalf.
05:26I have spent my life advocating for women and girls.
05:30I have worked hard to stop the terrible abuses so many women and girls face here and around the world,
05:37including human trafficking, forced labor, domestic violence, and sexual slavery.
05:44For too long, these have been largely invisible crimes or not treated as crimes at all.
05:50But the survivors are real, and they are entitled to justice.
05:55In Southeast Asia, I met girls as young as 12 years old who had been forced into prostitution and raped
06:02repeatedly.
06:03Some were dying of AIDS.
06:06In Eastern Europe, I met mothers who told me how they lost their daughters to trafficking and did not know
06:12where to turn.
06:12In settings around the world, I met survivors trying to rebuild their lives and help rescue others,
06:19with little support from people in power who too often turned a blind eye and a cold shoulder.
06:26If you are new to this issue, let me tell you, Jeffrey Epstein was a heinous individual, but he is
06:33far from alone.
06:41Thank you, sir.
06:42Can I intercede?
06:43Could you read back the initial premise of your question?
06:45Because I, too, did not hear.
06:46Yes, ma'am.
Comentarios