I’ve watched both now, or I should say as much of both as I am willing to, and I’ve come away with a handful of observations.

No factual bombshells were launched or landed, which I expected: while Bill had a quid pro quo with Epstein for use of his planes in return for an hour of discussion on any flights of more than four hours, Epstein had contributed to various mutual causes, and Maxwell had attended their daughter’s wedding, the Clintons were simply not in Epstein’s orbit and did not have any factual information to offer.

However, and this was especially evident in Hilary’s testimony, the Clintons did have extensive knowledge and understanding of the Oversight Committee in general as well as the wide discrepancy in what the committee claims to be doing (finding truth) and are actually doing (political scapegoating and distraction). The committee was clearly trying to have another Bengazi hearing, and instead she kept taking them to the woodshed, pointing out repeatedly that she’d read all the witness depositions of the committee so far, and in none of them had a single majority member asked any witness a question directly in regard to Jeffrey Epstein.

As someone deeply disturbed by the present administration’s disregard of the Constitution, it was refreshing to hear Hilary remind the committee that they (Congress) are co-equal to both the judicial and executive branches of government, that they “are not beholden to the Justice Department” in any way, and have a clear Article I responsibility to finding the truth, including getting whatever is being falsely withheld (the remainder of the unredacted files, the records of Epstein’s financial transactions from the Department of the Treasury that are being withheld from Sen. Ron Wyden, etc).

The introduction to Bill’s testimony also gave insight as to what the photo business during Hilary’s testimony was about: their lawyer reiterated the Clintons’ desire to have the press present because, as they had suspected would be the case and had now become fact, select unauthorized bits from the deposition were used to create deepfakes that are now circulating. As the lawyer explained, when everyone watches the same thing at the same time, that kind of real-time public knowledge leaves no room for deepfakes. But for myself, and the reason I mention it, it seems quite clear from listening to the hours of testimony that that was the purpose from the start, for at least some of the majority members: they were not asking questions, they were putting out soundbites.

The difference in how the witnesses were treated was also incredibly different. For whatever reason, a number of majority members routinely interrupted, spoke over, contradicted, and even fought with Hilary. Bill had to suffer through very little of that by comparison: in fact I’d say that for the most part everyone on both sides was at least polite toward him, though he too got his share.

Which brings me to my last point. The behavior of Nancy Mace, specifically, toward both witnesses was an absolute disgrace and a dishonor to the office she holds. It was thoroughly disgusting toward both witnesses and brought forward no truth at all, it just wasted time as an exercise in personal harassment of witnesses. With Hilary she was trying to catfight about who was doing what during 9/11; with Bill she was trying to catch him in a non-existent lie by using a Daily Beast article that very questionably quoted a statement he made in 2019 but without ever referring to the actual statement, demanding that he answer to the article as opposed to asking him about what he actually, provably said himself. That last bit was such a confusion that no one ever did figure out what the question was supposed to be (probably the point) and in the end one of Bill’s staffers produced the literal statement, which his attorney then read into the record.

Overall Mace’s behavior was just obscene, and reminiscent of so many of the Epstein deposition transcripts I’ve read where the victims were just battered for hours with pointless hostile confusion, and for that reason alone it was sickening. Several majority members did this to Hilary, but none so openly as Mace, and she did it to both of them. While they both held their ground, they’re also both almost eighty years old, and Bill especially is obviously not in great shape. Since when do we scream at and badger our elders in an open attempt to confuse them and beat them down? It was such a deliberate shitshow and abuse of power that it made me ashamed to watch it. I ended up skipping large portions of the majority questioning for Hilary for this reason: it was literally sickening, and I’ve seen enough evil in my life already.

TL;DR: if you’re looking for the truth of the files and the breadth of the trafficking allegations, as I am, then it’s pretty goddamn clear many of the majority members are openly batting for Team Coverup.

EDITED a word