President Donald Trump on Friday expressed some discomfort with the House Oversight Committee’s deposition of former president Bill Clinton and suggested the U.S. could soon see a “friendly” government in charge of Cuba as he spoke to reporters before leaving the White House for a speech in Texas and a golf weekend at his Florida home.
“I don’t like seeing him deposed, but they certainly went after me more than that,” Trump said when asked for his thoughts on his predecessor giving evidence to the GOP-led panel as part of a long-running investigation into disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The president’s comments came as Clinton, who served as president for two terms from 1993 to 2001, was in the midst of a recorded and transcribed session with lawmakers in his adopted hometown of Chappaqua, New York.
In a prepared statement to lawmakers, the ex-president complained that the panel had subpoenaed his wife, former Secretary of State and New York senator Hillary Clinton, despite her lack of any personal connection to the deceased sex trafficker.
“You made Hillary come in. She had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. Nothing. She has no memory of even meeting him. She neither traveled with him nor visited any of his properties. Whether you subpoenaed 10 people or 10,000, including her, was simply not right,” Clinton said, according to a statement released by his office.
Clinton, who has never been accused of any wrongdoing associated with Epstein, did have had a social and professional relationship with him which dated to before Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution as part of a sweetheart plea deal that saw him avoid federal sex trafficking charges.
But he told lawmakers he had “no idea of the crimes Epstein was committing” and maintained that he “saw nothing and did nothing wrong” during his association with the late criminal.
Trump also told reporters that his administration is in talks with the Cuban government, which he said is reeling from a decades-old American trade embargo and a recent blockade on oil shipments imposed by the U.S.
He teased the possibility of what he called a “friendly takeover” of the island, which has been run by a communist government at odds with Washington since the 1950s.
“They have no anything right now, but they’re talking with us, and maybe we’ll have a friendly takeover of Cuba. We could very well end up having a friendly takeover of Cuba after many, many years,” Trump said.
He added that such a development could be “very positive” for the large number of Cuban exiles who’ve made their home in the U.S.
“You know, we have people living here that want to go back to Cuba, and they’re very happy with what’s going,” he said.
“Marco Rubio is dealing on it and at a very high level. And you know, they have no money, they have no oil, they have no food. And it’s really right now a nation in deep trouble, and they want our help.”
The Cuban government has said it has made overtures to Washington about potentially exchanging information and cooperating in an investigation following the fatal shooting of an American-owned speedboat in Cuban waters on Wednesday.
Cuba’s deputy foreign minister, Carlos Fernández de Cossío, said Thursday that Havana plans to ask Washington for information about the people who were on board the Florida-registered speedboat, which was met with fire by Cuban security forces after people aboard started shooting at soldiers off the island’s north coast.
The Cuban government has said four aboard the boat were killed and six others injured.
A U.S. official said Thursday that at least one American citizen was killed and another wounded in the incident.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the ongoing investigation, also said another member of the 10-person crew was in the U.S. on a visa and several others may have been green card holders.
For his part, Rubio said that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Coast Guard are investigating the incident.
“The majority of the facts being publicly reported are those by the information provided by the Cubans. We will verify that independently as we gather more information, and we’ll be prepared to respond accordingly,” he said.
With additional reporting by agencies
