Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s deposition before the House Oversight Committee was temporarily suspended Thursday after Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) sent an unauthorized photograph to conservative podcaster Benny Johnson.
Johnson, who hosts a popular conservative podcast, posted the photograph on X.
The image showed Clinton actively testifying during the closed deposition proceedings.
Johnson credited Boebert directly for providing him with the photograph. The House Oversight Committee moved quickly to halt the deposition following the post going public.
The deposition did not remain suspended for long. After committee members addressed the situation, proceedings resumed and Clinton continued her testimony.
Johnson pushed back against claims that sharing the photograph was improper. He took to X to defend both himself and Boebert in the aftermath of the brief suspension.
“It was authorized,” Johnson wrote on X.
“And it’s hilarious they’re trying to use this to weasel out of answering questions on Epstein. It was Hillary who demanded this deposition be LIVE for all to see.”
Boebert also weighed in on the controversy through her own X account, dismissing the notion that Johnson had acted improperly and confirming the deposition would move forward.
“Benny did nothing wrong. Proceeding with deposition,” Boebert wrote on X.
Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, had sought to testify publicly if they were going to participate in the deposition at all. New York Times congressional correspondent Annie Karni reported that detail.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer did not grant the Clintons their request for a public proceeding. The deposition was instead conducted in a closed-door format before the photograph leak temporarily disrupted it.
The Clintons agreed to appear before the committee on Feb. 2. Their agreement to testify came after their ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein drew renewed scrutiny from lawmakers.
The former president was referenced in a set of files the Department of Justice released on Feb. 1, the Daily Caller previously reported. Among the materials was a photograph depicting Bill Clinton sitting in a hot tub alongside Epstein.
The DOJ released the Epstein-related documents in stages as part of an ongoing compliance effort. The agency’s releases were carried out to fulfill the requirements of a federal law mandating public access to the files.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act required the government to make those records available to the public. President Donald Trump signed the legislation into law in November.
The law set the legal framework that compelled the DOJ to begin releasing the tranches of documents, which included the materials referencing the former president.
