WASHINGTON — Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told U.S. House lawmakers on Thursday that she had no knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein's or Ghislaine Maxwell's crimes at the start of two days of depositions that will also include former President Bill Clinton. “I had no idea about their criminal activities. I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein," Hillary Clinton said in an opening statement she shared on social media. The closed-door depositions in the Clintons' hometown of Chappaqua, a typically quiet hamlet north of New York City, come after months of tense back-and-forth between the former high-powered Democratic couple and the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee. It will be the first time that a former president has been forced to testify before Congress. Yet the demand for a reckoning over Epstein's abuse of underage girls has become a near-unstoppable force on Capitol Hill and beyond. President Donald Trump, a Republican who has expressed regret that the Clintons are being forced to testify, bowed last year to pressure to release case files on Epstein, wh