The Epstein committee shouldn't be defined by politics - but it is hard to avoid

It was never going to be a meeting of minds.

There was acrimony going into Hillary Clinton's appearance before the Congressional committee and it grew through the hours spent together.

The former first lady and secretary of state had dismissed the exercise as "partisan political theatre" in her opening statement. In a news conference afterwards, she offered a withering retrospective, calling it repetitive, unproductive and "unusual" with questions towards the end about UFOs and conspiracy theories.

"I don't know how many times I had to say I did not know Jeffrey Epstein," she told a news conference, adding she was confident her husband didn't know about Epstein's crimes.

The video transcript, when released, will showcase the Q&A as it looked. It sounded fraught. There was peak confrontation when Lauren Boebert, a Republican committee member, sent a photo of Hillary Clinton and it ended up on the 'X' account of a right-wing podcaster. Clinton stormed out and there was a break before proceedings resumed.

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Boebert had breached the 'no pictures' agreement and it's fair to say she didn't show remorse. I asked why she sent the picture and her reply was: "Why not?"

She later posted on X: "No US ambassadors were harmed in the taking of today's photo."

It was a clear reference to the death of a US ambassador in Benghazi in 2012. Clinton, as the then secretary of state, was blamed for security failings.

It speaks to the sharpness of the political edge in this exercise.

Republican Chair of the committee, James Comer, said afterwards: "We learned a lot. There were a lot of questions that we asked that we, you know, weren't satisfied with the answers that we got, but we will continue to move forward."

Moving forward for the committee means moving on to Bill Clinton.

In his Friday session, he has rather more questions to answer than his wife, having had an association with Jeffrey Epstein laid bare in the Epstein files.

It promises to be a penetrating series of questions about what he knew and what he didn't.

It is important, as is every Q&A on Epstein, for survivors in their search for truth and justice. They demand straightforward enquiries of all concerned with the sex-trafficker. They don't want a process shaped by politics. It is, however, the way it's shaping up.

(c) Sky News 2026: The Epstein committee shouldn't be defined by politics - but it is hard to avoid