The 42nd president became the first sitting or former president to testify before members of Congress in more than 40 years, as he faced the House Oversight Committee in their investigation into the paedophile financier.

In a video posted on X, Mr Clinton stated that he had ended his brief acquaintance with Epstein years before his crimes came to light.

"Though I never witnessed during our limited interactions any indication with what was truly going on, I offered the little I do know in the hopes that it would help prevent anything like this from ever happening again."

Mr Clinton has denied wrongdoing and expressed regret for his association with Epstein.

He targeted Republicans for making his wife Hillary testify the day before, even though Mrs Clinton repeatedly stated she didn't know Epstein, and never went to his island or his properties.

Her husband said her subpoena was "simply not right".

He continued: "I had no idea of the crimes Epstein was committing. No matter how many photos they show of me, I have two things that, at the end of the day, matter far more than any interpretation of 20-year-old photos.

"I know what I saw, and more importantly, what I didn't see. And I know what I did, and more importantly, what I didn't do. I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong."

Mr Clinton said he never would have flown on his plane if he had any inkling of what was going on and would've turned him in personally if he knew.

"Even with 20/20 hindsight, I saw nothing that ever gave me real pause."

Mr Clinton was questioned for more than six hours and was also asked about a picture of him in a jacuzzi released as part of the Epstein files.

A person in the room for the deposition said Mr Clinton didn't know who he was pictured with and said he didn't have sex with them.

Mr Clinton also repeatedly said during questioning that he never visited Epstein's private island.

"When the video of my testimony today is released, I hope it will motivate everyone to go in front of Congress to say what they know," he said.

"I hope it will motivate the justice department to finally release all the files and to ensure that this never happens again. The survivors deserve that."

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His hearing took place behind closed doors in Chappaqua, New York state, but Democrats and Republicans on the House Oversight Committee offered some indication of proceedings throughout the day.

Democratic representative Suhas Subramanyam told Sky News' US correspondent James Matthews that Mr Clinton generally "answered all of our questions" and had been thorough in his answers.

Republican representative James Comer said Mr Clinton told the committee that incumbent president Donald Trump "has never said anything to make me think he was involved", but Democratic counterpart Robert Garcia said Mr Clinton brought up "additional information about discussions with President Trump".

Democrats also say a "new precedent" has been set with Mr Clinton's testimony, as they continue to ramp up pressure for Mr Trump to testify.

Mr Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein, and says he used to be friends with the convicted sex offender but cut that off before he was accused of sexual abuse.

And yet, at a lectern outside the venue where she'd just been questioning a former president, Republican Nancy Mace told the media this: "Epstein victims have exonerated President Trump. This is a trope, a rabbit hole that you guys have been going down, but he's been exonerated over and over again by Epstein victims."

Which is news to many survivors. I asked Rep Mace when survivors had told her the president is exonerated because they had only ever told me they wanted to see him questioned by her committee. She replied: "I've never heard that from a single victim."

Anna Paulina Luna, her Republican colleague on the House Oversight Committee, has expressed similar views that Epstein survivors see the president as being in the clear.

You have to wonder at the extent of their research.

Dani Bensky, an Epstein survivor, told Sky News: "Trump has certainly not been exonerated. There is evidence, and there are investigative leads that need to be looked into. Just because a survivor doesn't raise a hand in a group setting, doesn't mean that they didn't experience or witness harm. It means that safety and defamation are extremely real fears.

"To suggest Trump is exonerated is an insult to survivors and speaks to the continued failures of the DoJ [Department of Justice] to follow the investigative leads that are in front of them."

Jess Michaels, an Epstein survivor, posted on Threads: "Rep Luna did not meet with all 1200+ victims from an over 30-year time span. WE, as a collective, have not cleared President Trump of wrongdoing. He IS a person of interest. He should testify.

"Signed ~ an Epstein survivor."

They are two women among many who hold a similar view. It's clear that Epstein survivors want questions asked of Donald Trump, a former friend of Jeffrey Epstein, who is featured in the files.

To state that they have exonerated him is simply wrong and risks undermining their pursuit of justice.

It also feeds the theory - whether it's true or not - that Republicans are providing cover for their president at the expense of a proper and full investigation.

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Politics are laced through the Epstein affair. The transcripts of the Clinton interviews, when they are released, will reflect the truth of their testimony. It will also provide proper context for the closing statement of Republican chair James Comer, who said that former president Bill Clinton had "exonerated" President Trump as he "has no information that President Trump did anything wrong, and that President Trump never said anything to Clinton to make him think that he was involved with Epstein".

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Notwithstanding that, Democrats dispute the Republicans' characterisation of Clinton's evidence, the notion that Trump is exonerated because he didn't confess to an old foe is simply absurd.

The calls for the current president to appear before the House Oversight Committee didn't end when Clinton left the room.

Donald Trump emphatically denies any knowledge of, or involvement in, Jeffrey Epstein's criminal behaviour.

Inclusion in the Epstein files is no indication of guilt.

There was a sea of empty chairs and but a smattering of supporters in a huge, near-deserted room.

Seasoned operators - be it Nigel Farage, Sir Keir Starmer or Ed Davey - would have had the placards lifted and the activists cheering, but Polanski and his new MP, Hannah Spencer, enjoyed just a smattering of applause as they took to the stage.

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But, make no mistake, if the celebration was muted in the moment, the implications of the result are absolutely mega.

The Green Party went from third in this seat at the 2024 General Election to winning by 4,400 votes over Reform UK, and overturning Labour's 13,000 majority with a whopping 26 percentage point swing.

It was only the 18th time in 100 years that a party had come from third to take a seat, and the Greens clocked up 40% of the vote.

It was a stunning victory that proved the Polanski surge is real and that the Greens are a serious threat to Labour's left flank.

Starmer ran a campaign claiming that only Labour could beat Reform. This by-election proved that wrong.

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Greens can argue they can beat Reform in working-class Britain

Now the Greens can argue that they are the party that can beat Reform in working-class Britain as Polanski positions the party firmly on Labour's left.

It is a nightmare for Labour as it finds itself fighting on two fronts.

Starmer's stony face as he addressed the country on Friday said more than a thousand words could: the Greens, like Reform, are emerging as a serious, seat-winning electoral force.

Had Reform won, Starmer could have used it as proof that voting for the Greens was a waste of time. Instead, he now has to try to prove to Labour voters why they should stick with him rather than tack to the left with the Greens.

Starmer recriminated after results

In the hours after the results, the recriminations began.

Angela Rayner, the former deputy leader, said the result was a "wake-up call" that showed the party needed to be "braver" as she seemed to voice what many MPs think: that Labour needs to move more to the left.

The unions also piled in with Sharon Graham of Unite saying Labour needed to "stop listening to rich mates and listen to everyday people" while Fire Brigades Union general secretary Steve Wright said Labour has to change course and its "us versus Reform" strategy "is in tatters", with the core vote collapsing.

Starmer, who looked shell-shocked, didn't answer these criticisms as he addressed the cameras. Instead he reiterated his position that only Labour could unite the country and he would continue to "fight against extremes in politics" on both the left and the right that "want to tear our country apart".

The two-party system has shifted to a multi-party one

It is important to say here that by-election results are in general not indicative of national elections, and - as Labour will be arguing - when it comes to a general election, people are picking a prime minister and government rather than registering, in some cases, a protest vote.

But this result does tell us something about the shape of our politics in this country.

It reinforces the idea that the two-party system has shifted to a multi-party one.

Voters are looking for alternatives on the left and right

The Green Party and Reform UK took 70% of the vote in this by-election as Labour came in third in its once 38th safest seat, and the Conservatives lost their deposit.

It is a reminder that voters are impatient for change, have decided that Starmer's government is not it, and are looking at alternatives on the left and the right of the two governing parties.

Starmer has spent much of his first 18 months facing out towards Reform, but this result shows that the Greens, positioning as the progressive left, can mobilise ethnic minority voters who have long been staunch Labour, younger voters, and more left-wing Labour voters who flocked to Corbyn's Labour but feel politically homeless in Starmer's Labour.

Polanski hails 'seismic victory'

"Labour's electoral stranglehold is over. This is a seismic victory. We have torn the roof off British politics, and that's because people now recognise there is an alternative," said Polanski at his news conference, telling me that, just as Reform are replacing the Conservatives, the Greens are beginning to do the same to Labour.

Starmer's approach, and hope, is that as these insurgent parties become more successful at the ballot box and their policies and people become more scrutinised, voters may think twice about voting for them in a general election.

On Friday, Labour again took aim at the Green Party's policy to legalise all drugs or withdraw from NATO as proof that Polanski doesn't have a "serious programme for government".

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Voters want a full-fat version of progressive politics

But what we saw on Friday is that voters don't want, as pollster Luke Tryl told us on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast, a "Macron" strategy in which progressives are asked to compromise in the middle ground for fear of something worse (in this case Reform). They want a full-fat version of progressive politics instead.

What inspired a huge swathe of voters to Corbyn's Labour seems to be now pushing them into the arms of Polanski's Greens.

For Starmer, it is the stuff of nightmares as he contemplates attacks on both flanks.

The squeeze that broke the Conservatives at the last general election - Reform to the right and Labour/the Lib Dems to the left - now threatens to sink Labour too. It makes the May local elections all the more daunting and consequential for Starmer's premiership.

Words including "Zionist war criminal", "Stop the Genocide" and "Free Palestine" were sprayed in red paint on the bronze statue in Parliament Square in Westminster in the early hours of Friday.

Caspar San Giorgio, 38, of no fixed address, was arrested shortly after 4am on Friday, police said.

He was taken into custody and charged at 3.50am on Saturday.

He was remanded and is due to appear at Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court later this morning.

San Giorgio was also arrested on suspicion of supporting Palestine Action, which is a proscribed organisation, under the Terrorism Act. the Metropolitan Police said on Friday.

The statue was cordoned off and work to clean it began on Friday.

Further graffiti read "Never again is Now" and "Globalise the Intifada".

It is the president and his secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, going nuclear over Anthropic's refusal to allow the Pentagon to use its AI for "any lawful purpose".

Describing Anthropic as a woke, radical left company, the US president said on his Truth Social platform that "The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War", adding that the company's actions were putting American lives and national security in jeopardy.

Until now, however, Anthropic was doing more than any other AI lab to support the Pentagon.

Anthropic's Claude AI is the only frontier model already being used extensively for sensitive military planning and operations.

It's been widely reported that Claude AI was used as part of the Pentagon's "Maven Smart System" to plan and execute the military operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January.

The origin of the dispute wasn't about Anthropic's commitment to the US military; instead, its insistence on "red lines" in relation to the use of AI technology.

Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei demanded assurances it wouldn't be used for mass surveillance of civilians or lethal automated attacks without human oversight.

In a statement on Wednesday, Amodei said some uses of AI are "simply outside the bounds of what today's technology can safely and reliably do".

In a post on X, equally as seething as the president's, secretary Hegseth announced that, as well as being blacklisted, Anthropic would also be designated a Supply-Chain Risk - a legal intervention previously reserved for foreign tech companies seen as a direct threat to US national security.

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Given growing concerns about AI safety, it's a move that has shocked AI safety campaigners, but also raises serious questions about the future viability of the Pentagon's "AI-First" strategy.

Secretary Hegseth has given Anthropic six months to remove its AI from the Pentagon's systems. But there are now questions about what he might replace it with.

For the first time in the short history of superintelligent AI, the row appears to have united the AI industry.

In a memo to staff on Thursday, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, which has also been in talks with the Pentagon, announced he shares the same "red lines" as Anthropic.

Separately, more than 400 employees at Google and OpenAI have signed an open letter calling for their industry to stand together in opposing the Department of War's position.

In a copy of the OpenAI memo seen by Sky News, Altman tells staff: "Regardless of how we got here, this is no longer just an issue between Anthropic and the DoW; this is an issue for the whole industry and it is important to clarify our stance."

The move by the Trump administration appears, therefore, to be as much about power as it is about AI safety.

The Pentagon has already said it wouldn't use AI for mass surveillance of the US population, nor unsupervised autonomous weapons.

Its furious response to Anthropic seems more in response to a big tech attempting to dictate terms to the government, rather than what those terms actually are.

In taking on Silicon Valley, which, though AI investment largely accounts for much of the current US economic growth, the administration has just declared war on a powerful opponent.