Former US president Bill Clinton denied wrongdoing Friday to a congressional panel probing his links to Jeffrey Epstein, before calling on others to testify as Democrats seek to shift focus onto Donald Trump’s ties to the sex offender.Clinton features prominently in the Epstein files but insists that he broke ties well before the disgraced billionaire’s 2008 conviction for sex offenses.”I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong,” Clinton said in his opening statement, shared on social media. The Republican chair of the House committee probing Epstein, James Comer, said “we believe this was a very productive deposition that President Clinton answered every question — or attempted to answer every question.”Comer’s Republican colleague Nancy Mace alleged there were “inconsistencies” in his testimony without providing specific examples.Democrats on the committee have reiterated their call for Trump, who also has well-documented links to Epstein, to be quizzed.”Let’s be real, we are talking to the wrong president,” said Democratic committee member Suhas Subramanyam, who also emphasized that Clinton had not dodged any questions.In his statement, Clinton did not name Trump directly but said “no person is above the law, even presidents — especially presidents.” As for Trump, he repeated his skepticism over the whole process, telling reporters he likes Clinton “and I don’t like seeing him deposed.”In a video statement he posted late Friday on X, Clinton appeared to criticize the process in which he had been asked to testify but others had not, warning against the sharp partisan battles that have shaped the scandal.”I hope that by being here today, we can bring ourselves just a little further from the brink, and back to being a country where we can disagree civilly and we can search for truth and justice, and it outweighs the partisan urge to score points and create spectacle,” he said.”I hope it will motivate everyone to go in front of Congress to say what they know,” he said, without naming anyone.Being mentioned in the files released by the US Department of Justice does not imply wrongdoing and Clinton — like Trump — has not been accused of a crime or formally investigated.Clinton follows his wife, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who testified Thursday and defiantly called for Trump to appear before the panel.The lawmakers should ask Trump “directly under oath about the tens of thousands of times he shows up in the Epstein files,” she said.The depositions are being held behind closed doors, with Bill Clinton likening the proceedings to a “kangaroo court.” The couple has called for them to be open and televised.Hillary Clinton said she had never known Epstein or visited the properties where he hosted world celebrities and powerful business and political figures — as well as allegedly trafficking young women and girls.Bill Clinton has acknowledged extensive interactions with Epstein but said he never visited the financier’s infamous private Caribbean island.Epstein was convicted in 2008 for soliciting sex from girls as young as 14, but died in a New York jail cell in 2019 before he could be tried on sex trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide but like much else around Epstein is the subject of lurid conspiracy theories.The Clintons had initially rejected subpoenas ordering them to testify, but the Democratic power couple agreed to do so after House Republicans threatened to hold them in contempt of Congress.- ‘Turned him in’ -Democrats say the investigation is being weaponized to attack Trump’s political opponents rather than to conduct legitimate oversight.Previously unseen photographs from the files include one showing Bill Clinton reclining in a hot tub, part of the image obscured by a stark black rectangle.In another, Clinton is pictured swimming alongside a dark-haired woman who appears to be Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.Bill Clinton has acknowledged flying on Epstein’s private plane several times in the early 2000s for Clinton Foundation-related humanitarian work.”Jeffrey Epstein was in the White House 17 times while Bill Clinton was President. We know that Bill Clinton flew on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane at least 27 times. So those are questions that we’re going to ask,” said Comer.Clinton said in his opening statement “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.”The depositions are being held in Chappaqua, New York, home to the Clintons, where dozens of journalists and Secret Service officers have converged.

OpenAI said Friday it struck a deal for the Pentagon to use its models in the US defense agency’s classified network, with “safeguards,” after President Donald Trump blacklisted AI rival Anthropic.Trump had ordered the government to stop using Anthropic, calling it a threat to national security after it refused to agree to unconditional military use of its Claude models.The firm vowed to sue over the “intimidation” in what has become a rare public dispute between a major tech firm and the US government, insisting its technology should not be used for mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons systems.Hours later, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced a deal with the Pentagon to use its models with similar red lines to Anthropic, using “technical safeguards” that the Department of Defense had agreed to.”Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems,” Altman wrote on X, adding that those principles went “into our agreement.”The Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Washington had lashed out at Anthropic over its ethical concerns, saying the Pentagon operates within the law and contracted suppliers cannot set terms on how their products are employed.”I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology. We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.”Anthropic better get their act together, and be helpful during this phase out period, or I will use the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow,” Trump added.- Court challenge -Altman told employees Thursday that he was seeking an agreement with the Pentagon that would include demands similar to Anthropic’s, and that he hoped to help broker a resolution.”Humans should remain in the loop for high-stakes automated decisions,” he wrote in a memo to employees, according to US media.Anthropic echoed those sentiments in a statement earlier Friday, saying no pushback from Washington would “change our position on mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.”The company said it remains “ready to continue our work to support the national security of the United States.”The Pentagon had said Anthropic must agree to comply with its demand by 5:01 pm (22:01 GMT) Friday or face compulsion under the Defense Production Act.The Cold War-era law, last invoked during the Covid pandemic, grants the federal government sweeping powers to direct private industry toward national security priorities.The Pentagon also threatened to designate Anthropic a supply chain risk — a label typically reserved for companies from adversary nations.But in response Anthropic said it would seek to overturn the ban.”We will challenge any supply chain risk designation in court,” the San Francisco-based AI startup said in a lengthy statement that outlined the dangers of the Pentagon’s demands.- ‘Dangerous precedent’ -US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said earlier he was directing the Pentagon to follow through on the latter threat, and that “effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic.””Anthropic delivered a master class in arrogance and betrayal as well as a textbook case of how not to do business with the United States Government or the Pentagon,” Hegseth wrote on X.Calling Hegseth “the least qualified Secretary of Defense in our nation’s history,” top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries praised what he called Anthropic’s courage for pushing back “against this shocking invasion of privacy scheme.” “Mass surveillance of American citizens is unacceptable,” Jeffries added in his statement late Friday.The conflict had earlier drawn a show of solidarity from others in the industry, with hundreds of employees from AI giants Google DeepMind and OpenAI urging their companies to rally behind Anthropic in an open letter titled “We Will Not Be Divided.””We hope our leaders will put aside their differences and stand together to continue to refuse the Department of War’s current demands for permission to use our models for domestic mass surveillance and autonomously killing people without human oversight,” the letter said.”They’re trying to divide each company with fear that the other will give in. That strategy only works if none of us know where the others stand,” it added.