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Now: Former Pres. Clinton Testifying In House Epstein Probe; Dems: With Clinton Testifying In Epstein Probe, So Should Trump; Former Pres. Clinton: "I Saw Nothing, And I Did Nothing Wrong"; Source: Trump Briefed On Potential Military Operations In Iran; Trump Heads To Texas Amid Heated Senate Primary Fight. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired February 27, 2026 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[12:00:00]

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They were never loaded in the house. A lot of the ammo around the house were guns that he'd already sold because he -- that's what he did in his gun culture. He sold and traded and things like that. But he said that he never ever was told by Colt that he was going to shoot up a school or harm anyone with that gun. After lunch there is going to be cross examination and we'll see if his demeanor is the same, and he's going to have to answer some very tough questions. Wolf?

WOLF BLITZER, CNN CO-ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM: Indeed, he will all right. Jean Casarez, thank you very, very much, as always. And to our viewers, thanks very much for joining us this morning. You can always keep up with us on social media, @wolfblitzer and @pamelabrowncnn. We'll see you back here tomorrow morning, every weekday morning, 10 am Eastern. Inside Politics with our friend and colleague, Dana Bash, starts right now.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Two presidents, countless mentions in the Epstein files, but only one is getting deposed under oath. I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

Former President Bill Clinton is no stranger to Republican led investigations. Right now, he's inside this building in Chappaqua, New York with members of the House Oversight Committee answering questions about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Clinton and Epstein were once friendly, if not friends, but Clinton says, he broke off contact with Epstein years before the criminal allegations against him emerged. The intense questioning today will be bipartisan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JAMES COMER (R-KY): Yesterday, Ms. Clinton deferred a lot of questions to her husband. Today, there were at least a dozen times when she said, you'll have to ask my husband that. I can't answer that. So, we already had a big portfolio of questions for him and that increased yesterday.

REP. ROBERT GARCIA (D-CA): We have real questions that deserve serious answers from former President Clinton. And we have said from day one, that Democrats want to talk to anyone, whether they are a Republican or a Democrat, no matter how powerful they are, whatever position that they have been in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: MJ Lee is there in Chappaqua. MJ, President Clinton just released his prepared remarks that he is delivering behind closed doors. What did he say?

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL ENTERPRISE CORRESPONDENT: And yeah, this all has started just about an hour ago, and we just got his opening remarks that he delivered to the House Oversight Committee. And it's clear, Dana, that there are two things that he is going to emphasize. One, he is going to deny any wrongdoing on his part. And second, he will deny that he knew anything about Jeffrey Epstein's crimes.

This is a part of what he told lawmakers. He said, first, I 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.

And Dana, importantly, he also previewed in his opening remarks that he was often going to answer questions with the words, I don't recall. He said he's simply not going to say something that he is not sure of. And he emphasized that all of these events took place many years ago, and he predicted too that probably those answers were not going to be satisfying to the lawmakers inside that deposition room.

You know, all of this goes to show you just already how different today is from yesterday, when Hillary Clinton was deposed in front of the same panel. You know, Bill Clinton as a reminder, did have a relationship with Epstein. He traveled on Epstein's planes. They were together photographed in the Epstein files, including in some photos where the former president is pictured with coconspirator Ghislaine Maxwell or other women who were redacted.

We expect this to be, Dana, a really long day, yesterday for reference, went just about seven hours, including that interruption in the middle of the day. And lawmakers have said today could be an even longer day than that. And even some of the Democratic members that I've spoken with, they have said, they are prepared for very tough questions for Bill Clinton, given how much he is seen throughout the Epstein files.

One other thing I just want to note about Hillary Clinton is that Bill Clinton in his opening remarks, said that he wanted to say something personal, that he believed that it was absolutely not right for these lawmakers to bring in his wife for a deposition yesterday. Clearly, the sparks have been flying. The political theater has been on full display as it pertains to Hillary Clinton's deposition, including Congresswoman Nancy Mace this morning saying that Hillary Clinton had been screaming and was unhinged as a part of the deposition yesterday.

When I asked the Hillary Clinton spokesperson, Nick Merrill, about this, this is what he said. He said she is full of shit. This is talking about Congresswoman Mace. And that Hillary Clinton was actually just appalled that the congresswoman wouldn't let the former secretary of state answer a question about 9/11. Now obviously, this is all completely out of context and we're not going to know the context until we get the transcripts and the full videos of the deposition, Dana?

[12:05:00]

BASH: Yeah. And just on what President Clinton just said behind closed doors about his wife. He said, she nearly traveled with him, meaning Epstein, nor visited any of his properties, whether you subpoenaed 10 people or 10,000 including her, was simply not right. MJ, thank you so much. Keep us posted if you hear or see anything during this testimony or when it's over, of course.

I'm joined here by a terrific group of reporters, and Jeff Zeleny, I'm going to start with you. And before I do, I just want to kind of emphasize some of the things that we do know going into this deposition, the ties that Bill Clinton did have to Epstein. We know about communication between Ghislaine Maxwell and Clinton aids from 2001 to 2004. Bill Clinton did fly on Epstein's private jet at least 16 times. He claims it was related to Clinton Foundation work. There are multiple photos of Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein, and Clinton claims to have cut ties prior to Epstein's 2006 charges.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Look, so that's where this begins. I mean, obviously Bill Clinton, as MJ was just saying, has much more to add than Hillary Clinton did but they have been sort of viewed as a package deal here. And the Clintons for weeks and months, really waged what seemed like a scorched earth, old school campaign against hoping that this would never happen. This day would never come.

But what is so interesting about this moment is that this scandal is different than any other scandal of the Clintons or any other investigation they've long been involved in. The victims are front and center in this investigation, and that is something that led Democrats, House Democrats, nine of them, I believe, to vote with Republicans to effectively hold the Clintons in contempt of Congress if they didn't testify. So that's kind of the backdrop of this.

But Bill Clinton himself, I mean, he's going to say that I know what I saw and more importantly, what I didn't see. I know what I did, more importantly what I didn't do. I saw nothing. I did nothing. So that does not necessarily answer some of the curious questions we have. And most notably is those pictures that we all remember that the DOJ released who are the women who are in the hot tub with him.

So, I'm not sure that this is going to be satisfying at the end of the day, but it's going to be a long day here and it will be interesting just to see if any light is shed on this or not. But it definitely raises the prospect of if this president is called before the committee, will another president ever be called before the committee? Is this precedent setting?

BASH: Well, on that note, that's what the top Democrat on this committee Robert Garcia said this morning before going in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GARCIA: There's a precedent now. We now want President Trump to come in and to testify under oath in front of the Oversight Committee. We want the first lady, who we know had a relationship as well with Jeffrey Epstein to come in under oath and testify to the Oversight Committee. That is the new precedent that Republicans wanted to set here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Alayna, I mean, there's not a real discussion among Republicans who run Congress and President Trump to even remotely do that, but it is certainly understandable that this is what Democrats are pushing for.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Oh, absolutely. And especially, I think there's been so much attention as well on, you know, Hillary Clinton, what you read from, you know, the former president's statement saying this is personal from about him, them calling his wife and the former secretary of state.

Now this means potentially what they call Melania Trump, and eventually, if they ever wanted to do something else. She's obviously in photos.

BASH: You mean the Democrats get best --

TREENE: Yes, if Democrats. This is a different --

BASH: Yeah.

TREENE: -- in the future. And what Jeff -- to Jeff's point about the precedent this sets, and in the future, if Democrats have the gavel, would they be, you know, they might be in their rights to try and call the first lead in. But look, I think that one thing that's been interesting to me with all of this and some of my conversations with people at the White House, is they're not really talking about this. They're trying not to actually bring this into light.

You're not hearing them post about it that often as well, and that's partly because everything that's happening with this committee today is kind of the opposite of what we're seeing the White House strategy be, which is that they want to bury this and move on. They want to dismiss a lot of this and move on. They want to say that the president has called to release all the files. Of course, he actually was forced to do so because of Congress, but that's been an interesting thing as well.

But I do think for a lot of people, they're questioning, why is it just the Clintons who are right here? Why not any of the Republicans, including people who, I should say, like Howard Lutnick, who, you know, was shown kind of saying that he had had lunch with him much later than he had said this. BASH: Well, we have at the table somebody who wrote a really good column maybe trying to explore that or answer that question. Nia, you write, Clinton has long been a Republican obsession from Whitewater to Benghazi. This is about Hillary Clinton to use of a private email server as secretary of state and the lock her up chants that animated Trump's first run for the White House. Yesterday's testimony provided another entry in this litany of examples. It was much more about putting on a show for MAGA than about Epstein's horrific crimes.

[12:10:00]

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, BLOOMBERG POLITICS & POLICY COLUMNIST: No, I think that's right. And in so many ways it was a self-own, right. I mean, I think it revealed that this committee is not a real, serious committee, that it isn't a committee, this GOP committee. It's not really interested in really casting a wide net in talking to folks who actually have information about it. If you think about them having Wexner, who was a billionaire friend of Epstein, and a GOP donor.

Few Republicans actually showed up for that hearing to actually question him, but when it came to Hillary Clinton, they were posing for social media before this and saying, you know, let's go. And so, I think it was a real misstep on their part to have Hillary Clinton there. They full-well knew that she didn't travel on the plane, that she never even met Epstein. So, I think it has opened them up to real questions about how serious this investigation is.

BASH: And Jeff, just back to what's happening as we speak this moment. A former president of the United States behind closed doors testifying under oath before a Republican led committee. That is unprecedented. What is not unprecedented is Bill Clinton being under oath, and it may be one of the most memorable political moments of the 20th century. And I don't even think I'm exaggerating here when this happened.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL CLINTON, 42ND U.S. PRESIDENT: It depends upon what the meaning of the word is. If the - if he -- if is, means is and never has been, that is not -- that's one thing. If it means, there is none. That was a completely true statement.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENY: Wow. I mean, that certainly is etched into all of our minds in the annals of history. This is different in so many different ways. The scandal is different. One thing that the Clinton team was trying to avoid is having the former president come up to Capitol Hill to do it. That's why it's being done in Chappaqua. If I recall, this was done in the White House. I believe he was the sitting president.

BASH: Exactly.

ZELENY: So, yes, he does have history doing this, but boy, times have changed in most every way.

BASH: Yeah. All right, everybody stand by. Coming up. Is the U.S. on the verge of striking Iran or is President Trump still angling for a deal? Plus, Texas turnout is off the charts ahead of primary day. This coming Tuesday, we're going to dive into the Trump world feud that is defining the Republican fight in this race.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Is the U.S. days away from war with Iran? Well, today, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, told embassy staff. If they want to leave the country amid the possibility of strikes on Iran, they should quote, should do so TODAY. Today was in all caps. Sources tell CNN that President Trump was briefed on military options in Iran last night.

My panel is back now. Alayna?

TREENE: Yeah. Look, there's going to be more meetings today. I mean, the president will be in Texas. There are going to be some at the White House, though, without him. This is all in a very sensitive situation. I know from the series of conversations with I've had -- that I've had with people at the White House is that the president does still want diplomacy, and I know they've said that publicly. They say that is a sincere thing, but they also recognize that -- and this is something I don't think Trump has actually articulated very well.

But they do think that if there were time to make a move on Iran, the moment is now because of the proxies that are in the region are so weakened. And they also remember, you know, all of the trust that broke down last year before the U.S. actually had joined Israel and struck those nuclear facilities in Iran last summer, they had been having negotiations up until that point.

And so, there is a lot of people in the White House who are urging the president to have restraint, to, you know, and not move forward with strike, see if they can really work on having a deal be made. But there are other people saying that now is the time to strike, and doing so could actually make a deal more possible. So, it's very much unclear what could happen, but everyone is on high alert.

BASH: Yeah. And the argument for now is the time to strike isn't just about a nuclear deal, it's about regime change.

TREENE: Exactly.

BASH: And that the regime in Iran is the weakest -- belief that they are the weakest that they have been in decades, and if not now, when? J.D. Vance, the vice president of the United States, said this in the Washington Post. The idea that we are going to be in a Middle Eastern war for years with no end in sight, there is no chance that will happen. This, of course, is from a vice president who served a six- month tour in Iraq during the war.

ZELENY: I think saying no chance that that will happen is a misreading of recent history. I mean, that was not the intent, necessarily, of the Bush administration either. I mean a time that you and I, well remember, we all well remember. So, I think that that is not the goal, but it certainly is the worry of many people inside the president's own base, and of course, people on all sides of this.

[12:20:00]

But I still think the president has not made his case, not only to Congress, but to the American people. What would the rationale for this be? And that is something, of course, he is, you know, reluctant to do in one respect, but I still think the burden would be on him to do that. And we have not seen it at all. The State of the Union address, he mentioned it briefly, but not -- not very much, which was by design, obviously. So, we shall see. I think diplomacy is the ideal path and we should all hope that that is always the ideal path, but it's not the only path.

BASH: Yeah. And it was by design to not speak very much at all about Iran during the State of the Union, not only because it's, you know, it's a tense and tenuous time in the negotiations, but because they see what we see, which is that what the American people want to hear from the president is about the economy and affordability and not about foreign policy, which then feeds into the question of his explanation to a very skeptical and worried American people.

And I just want to play what he did say on Tuesday night about Iran and what he has said in the past about Iran, because remember, the U.S. did strike Iran's nuclear capabilities last year.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: In a breakthrough operation last June, the United States' military obliterated Iran's nuclear weapons program. Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: So, are they obliterated or do we need to get them to stop their nuclear program, which is, I mean, I'm not actually trying to be cute. It's a real question the Americans are asking.

HENDERSON: Yeah. It is a real question because even if you think back to that moment, he says they're obliterated. There were some reports saying that they weren't quite obliterated. And he was very mad that people were suggesting that somehow this mission didn't succeed in the way that he characterized it.

The other thing is, Americans had been in an agreement, the nuclear, you know, Iran nuclear agreement before, and Donald Trump withdrew from that agreement. So, this is all very confusing, I think, to public. Particularly, I think in some ways, to MAGA as well, right, this was presidents -- the president's base, who was very skeptical of foreign intervention. It was all about America first, and America only, which you have some folks pointing out now. So, this is -- it is -- it's very unclear why now, you know, sort of the urgency of this, and why did this rise to the level that it has.

BASH: All right, everybody stand by. Up next. President Trump is heading to Texas, where he is going to get a very warm welcome from all three Republican Senate candidates, each hoping to hitch a ride on his very long coattails in the Lone Star State.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: President Trump is heading to Corpus Christi, Texas on the final day of early voting before Tuesday's very competitive primaries. All three Republican Senate candidates will be there, trying to get presidential face time. John Cornyn, the incumbent Republican, Ken Paxton and Wesley Hunt, who are both trying to unseat him, have been desperately jockeying for a Trump endorsement. Of course, no one has it, but you wouldn't necessarily know that if you're watching the recent ads.

(PLAYING VIDEO)

BASH: President insists, he likes them all. My panel is back here to talk about this very, very spicy race. You know, Jeff Zeleny, you were there. I know we're going to talk about your reporting from there in a moment. But the fact that you have these three Republicans in such a traditionally red state, that's another conversation about whether it's going to stay that way with this race. And the president going down there but not saying who he supports is such an interesting dynamic.

ZELENY: It's really interesting. And he's going down there. It draws attention to the fact that he's not given an endorsement in this race. But boy, you wouldn't know it by watching some of those ads. I was in Texas earlier this week, and watching the ads, you think, oh, he endorsed Ken Paxton. Oh, he endorsed John Cornyn.

BASH: So, the ads are working.

ZELENY: But the reality is, there are a lot of members of Congress who are running statewide, the attorney general's race and other things. So, Trump has endorsed candidates up and down the ballot here. Part of the reason he's going there, I'm told, is yes, to tout the economy and his State of the Union message somewhat, but also to try and juice Republican enthusiasm, which is lagging democratic enthusiasm overall across the board.

But it does highlight the fact that he has not weighed in in the Senate race, despite an extraordinary effort from the Senate Majority Leader John Thune, has urged the president in most every phone call he has with him to support John Thune.

BASH: John Cornyn.

ZELENY: And I'm thinking -- yes, exactly, John Cornyn, sorry. And I'm thinking back to last summer, when President Trump spent almost a week in Scotland on his golf course. Ken Paxton turned up on the golf course in Scotland, as we reported in the time, trying to get the endorsement. He's very close to Donald Trump Jr. and others.