By STEPHEN GROVES

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Bill Clinton is testifying Friday before members of Congress investigating convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, answering for his connections to the disgraced financier from more than two decades ago.

The closed-door deposition in Chappaqua, New York, will mark the first time a former president has been compelled to testify to Congress. It comes a day after Clinton’s wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sat with lawmakers for her own deposition.

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Bill Clinton has also not been accused of any wrongdoing. Yet lawmakers are grappling with what accountability in the United States looks like at a time when men around the world have been toppled from their high-powered posts for maintaining their connections with Epstein after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges in Florida for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.

Hillary Clinton told lawmakers that she had no knowledge of how Epstein had sexually abused underage girls and had no recollection of even meeting him. But Bill Clinton will have to answer questions on a well-documented relationship with Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, even if it was from the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Hillary Clinton said Thursday that she expected her husband to testify that he had no knowledge of Epstein’s sexual abuse at the time they knew each other.

Republicans were relishing the opportunity to scrutinize the former Democratic president under oath.

“The Clintons haven’t answered very many, if any, questions about their knowledge or involvement with Epstein and Maxwell,” Rep. James Comer, the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, said Thursday.

“No one’s accusing, at this moment, the Clintons of any wrongdoing,” he added.

Republicans finally get a chance to question Bill Clinton

Republicans have wanted to question Bill Clinton about Epstein for years, especially as conspiracy theories arose following Epstein’s 2019 suicide in a New York jail cell while he faced sex trafficking charges.

Those calls reached a fever pitch late last year when several photos of the former president surfaced in the Department of Justice’s first release of case files on Epstein and Maxwell, a British socialite who was convicted of sex trafficking in December 2021 but maintains she’s innocent. Bill Clinton was photographed on a plane seated alongside a woman, whose face is redacted, with his arm around her. Another photo showed Clinton and Maxwell in a pool with another person whose face was redacted.

Epstein also visited the White House several times during Clinton’s presidency, and the pair later made several international trips together for their humanitarian work.

In the lead-up to the deposition, Bill Clinton has insisted he had limited knowledge about Epstein and was unaware of any sexual abuse he committed.

“I think the chronology of the connection that he had with Epstein ended several years before anything about Epstein’s criminal activities came to light,” Hillary Clinton said at the conclusion of her deposition Thursday.

Comer has pledged extensive questioning of the former president. He claimed that Hillary Clinton had repeatedly deferred questions about Epstein to her husband.

Has a precedent been set?

Democrats, who have supported the push to get answers from Bill Clinton, are arguing that it sets a precedent that should also apply to President Donald Trump, a Republican who had his own relationship with Epstein.

“We’re demanding immediately that we ask President Trump to testify in front of our committee and be deposed in front of Oversight Republicans and Democrats,” Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the committee, said Thursday.

Comer has pushed back on that idea, saying that Trump has answered questions on Epstein from the press.

Democrats are also calling for the resignation of Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Lutnick was a longtime neighbor of Epstein in New York City but said on a podcast that he severed ties with Epstein following a 2005 tour of Epstein’s home that disturbed Lutnick and his wife.

The public release of case files showed that Lutnick actually had two engagements with Epstein years later. He attended a 2011 event at Epstein’s home, and in 2012 his family had lunch with Epstein on his private island.

“He should be removed from office and at a minimum should come before the committee,” Garcia said of Lutnick.

Comer on Thursday said that it was “very possible” that Lutnick would be called to testify.

Follow the AP’s coverage of Jeffrey Epstein at https://apnews.com/hub/jeffrey-epstein.

By MATT O’BRIEN, AP Technology Writer

A public showdown between the Trump administration and Anthropic is hitting an impasse as military officials demand the artificial intelligence company bend its ethical policies by Friday or risk damaging its business.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei drew a sharp red line 24 hours before the deadline, declaring his company “cannot in good conscience accede” to the Pentagon’s final demand to allow unrestricted use of its technology.

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Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude, can afford to lose a defense contract. But the ultimatum this week from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posed broader risks at the peak of the company’s meteoric rise from a little-known computer science research lab in San Francisco to one of the world’s most valuable startups.

If Amodei doesn’t budge, military officials have warned they will not just pull Anthropic’s contract but also “deem them a supply chain risk,” a designation typically stamped on foreign adversaries that could derail the company’s critical partnerships with other businesses.

And if Amodei were to cave, he could lose trust in the booming AI industry, particularly from top talent drawn to the company for its promises of responsibly building better-than-human AI that, without safeguards, could pose catastrophic risks.

Anthropic said it sought narrow assurances from the Pentagon that Claude won’t be used for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons. But after months of private talks exploded into public debate, it said in a Thursday statement that new contract language “framed as compromise was paired with legalese that would allow those safeguards to be disregarded at will.”

That was after Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, posted on social media that “we will not let ANY company dictate the terms regarding how we make operational decisions” and added the company has “until 5:01 p.m. ET on Friday to decide” if it would meet the demands or face consequences.

Emil Michael, the defense undersecretary for research and engineering, later lashed out at Amodei, alleging on X that he “has a God-complex” and “wants nothing more than to try to personally control the US Military and is ok putting our nation’s safety at risk.”

That message hasn’t resonated in much of Silicon Valley, where a growing number of tech workers from Anthropic’s top rivals, OpenAI and Google, voiced support for Amodei’s stand late Thursday in an open letter.

Pages from the Anthropic website and the company’s logos are displayed on a computer screen in New York on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Patrick Sison)

OpenAI and Google, along with Elon Musk’s xAI, also have contracts to supply their AI models to the military.

“The Pentagon is negotiating with Google and OpenAI to try to get them to agree to what Anthropic has refused,” the open letter says. “They’re trying to divide each company with fear that the other will give in.”

Also raising concerns about the Pentagon’s approach were Republican and Democratic lawmakers and a former leader of the Defense Department’s AI initiatives.

“Painting a bullseye on Anthropic garners spicy headlines, but everyone loses in the end,” wrote retired Air Force Gen. Jack Shanahan in a social media post.

Shanahan faced a different wave of tech worker opposition during the first Trump administration when he led Maven, a project to use AI technology to analyze drone footage and target weapons. So many Google employees protested its participation in Project Maven at the time that the tech giant declined to renew the contract and then pledged not to use AI in weaponry.

“Since I was square in the middle of Project Maven & Google, it’s reasonable to assume I would take the Pentagon’s side here,” Shanahan wrote Thursday on social media. “Yet I’m sympathetic to Anthropic’s position. More so than I was to Google’s in 2018.”

He said Claude is already being widely used across the government, including in classified settings, and Anthropic’s red lines are “reasonable.” He said the AI large language models that power chatbots like Claude are also “not ready for prime time in national security settings,” particularly not for fully autonomous weapons.

“They’re not trying to play cute here,” he wrote.

Parnell asserted Thursday that the Pentagon wants to “ use Anthropic’s model for all lawful purposes” and said opening up use of the technology would prevent the company from “jeopardizing critical military operations,” though neither he nor other officials have detailed how they want to use the technology.

FILE – Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stands outside the Pentagon during a welcome ceremony for the Japanese defense minister at the Pentagon in Washington, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf, File)

The military “has no interest in using AI to conduct mass surveillance of Americans (which is illegal) nor do we want to use AI to develop autonomous weapons that operate without human involvement,” Parnell wrote.

When Hegseth and Amodei met Tuesday, military officials warned that they could designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk, cancel its contract or invoke a Cold War-era law called the Defense Production Act to give the military more sweeping authority to use its products, even if the company doesn’t approve.

Amodei said Thursday that “those latter two threats are inherently contradictory: one labels us a security risk; the other labels Claude as essential to national security.” He said he hopes the Pentagon will reconsider given Claude’s value to the military, but, if not, Anthropic “will work to enable a smooth transition to another provider.”

AP reporter Konstantin Toropin contributed to this report.

By SAM MEDNICK and SAM METZ

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — The U.S. Embassy in Israel on Friday told its staff that it could leave the country and urged anyone considering departure to do so immediately, as the threat of an American strike on Iran looms.

U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee told embassy employees in an email that discussions with officials in Washington had led to a decision authorizing departures for those who wished to leave.

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The email was recounted to The Associated Press by someone involved with the U.S. mission who wasn’t authorized to share details. Sent before 10:30 a.m., it urged staff considering departure to do so quickly, advising them to to focus initially on getting any flight out of Israel and to then make their way to Washington.

“Those wishing to take AD should do so TODAY,” Huckabee wrote, using an acronym for “authorized departure.”

“While there may be outbound flights over the coming days, there may not be,” he added.

Huckabee said that there was no need for panic, but for those desiring to leave, it was important to make plans soon.

The email came a day after Iran and the United States walked away from nuclear negotiations without a deal. Airlines such as Netherlands-based KLM have already announced plans to suspend flights out of Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport, and other embassies have also made plans for authorized departures from Israel and neighboring countries.

Australia on Wednesday “directed the departure of all dependents of Australian officials posted to Israel in response to the deteriorating security situation in the Middle East.” India and several European countries with missions in Iran advised citizens to avoid travel to the country as well.

On a town hall meeting Friday after the email was sent, Huckabee told staff that he was encouraging airlines to keep flying.

The departure authorizations signal a new level of contingency planning as a massive fleet of U.S. aircraft and warships mass in the Middle East.

Badr al-Busaidi, Oman’s foreign minister who is mediating in the negotiations, said that there had been significant progress made on Thursday, though officials from Iran and the United States haven’t announced steps forward.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Thursday offered no specifics but said “what needs to happen has been clearly spelled out from our side.”

Metz reported from Ramallah, West Bank.

By MUNIR AHMED and ABDUL QAHAR AFGHAN

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan and Afghanistan traded attacks in a dramatic escalation of tensions between the countries that Pakistan’s defense minister said Friday means they are now in “open war.”

Tensions have been high between the neighbors for months, with border clashes in October killing dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants. Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harboring militant groups that then stage attacks across the border and also of allying with its archrival India.

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A Qatari-mediated ceasefire ended the fighting, although the two sides still occasionally trade fire. Several rounds of peace talks in Istanbul in November failed to produce a formal agreement.

Late Thursday, Afghanistan launched a cross-border attack on Pakistan, saying it was in retaliation for deadly Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan border areas Sunday.

Pakistan then carried out airstrikes in Kabul and two other Afghan provinces early Friday.

After the strikes Friday, Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif said in an X post that Pakistan had hoped for peace in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of NATO forces in 2021 and expected the Taliban, which seized power in the country, to focus on the welfare of the Afghan people and regional stability.

Instead, he said that the Taliban had turned Afghanistan “into a colony of India,” with which Pakistan has periodically engaged in wars, clashes and skirmishes since gaining independence from British colonial rule in 1947. India has had improved ties with Afghanistan recently, offering to enhance bilateral trade, to the annoyance of Islamabad.

“Our patience has now run out. Now it is open war between us,” he said. There was no immediate reaction from Afghan officials.

Afghan authorities in the eastern Nangarhar province said that fighting was ongoing in the Torkham border area Friday morning. The province’s information directorate said that Pakistani mortar fire hit civilian areas in Torkham, including a refugee camp, which had been evacuated overnight. In response, Afghanistan was targeting Pakistani army posts across the border, it said.

‘Exporting terrorism’

Asif, the Pakistani defense minister, accused Afghanistan of “exporting terrorism.” Islamabad frequently levies the allegation at its western neighbor as militant violence has surged in Pakistan, accusing Afghanistan of supporting the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, and outlawed Baloch separatist groups.

Pakistan accuses the TTP — which is separate from but closely allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban — of operating from inside Afghanistan. Both the group and Kabul deny that charge.

Pakistan has also frequently accused neighboring India of backing the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army and the Pakistani Taliban, allegations New Delhi denies.

Asif’s comments came hours after Pakistan carried out airstrikes in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, as well as in Kandahar in the south and Paktia province in the southeast, according to Pakistani officials and Afghanistan government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid. Pakistan said the strikes were in retaliation for the Afghan cross-border attacks.

Retaliatory strikes

Afghanistan, meanwhile, said that it launched its attack late Thursday also in retaliation — for deadly Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan border areas Sunday.

The governments have issued sharply differing casualty claims. Each said that it inflicted heavy losses of dozens of soldiers on the other, while putting its own casualty figures in the single digits. The claims couldn’t be independently verified.

Afghanistan also claimed it had captured an undisclosed number of Pakistani soldiers. Mosharraf Ali Zaidi, a spokesperson for Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, denied any soldiers had been captured.

Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said Pakistan’s anti-drone systems shot down several small drones over the northwestern cities of Abbottabad, Swabi, and Nowshera on Friday. He said the drones appeared to be part of a failed attack by the Pakistani Taliban, and that there were no casualties. Tarar claimed the drone attacks “once again exposed direct linkages between the Afghan Taliban regime and terrorism in Pakistan.”

International calls for restraint

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan held separate phone calls with his Pakistani, Afghan, Qatari and Saudi counterparts on Friday to discuss the conflict, a Turkish official said, without providing details on the talks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government policy.

In October, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia had facilitated talks between the sides.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres urged both sides to protect civilians as required under international law and “to continue to seek to resolve any differences through diplomacy,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.

Russia called for an immediate halt to the fighting and for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, Russian diplomat Zamir Kabulov told news agency Ria Novosti. Kabulov, who is President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy for Afghanistan, said that Moscow would consider mediating between the two countries if asked, according to Ria Novosti.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi urged Pakistan and Afghanistan to resolve their differences through dialogue during the holy month of Ramadan. He also said that Tehran was ready to assist in facilitating dialogue.

Refugees at the border

Pakistani authorities said that dozens of Afghan refugees in the Torkham border area had been relocated to safer places.

Pakistan launched a sweeping crackdown in October 2023 to expel migrants without documents, urging those in the country to leave of their own accord to avoid arrest and forcibly expelling others. Iran also began a crackdown on migrants at around the same time.

Since then, millions have crossed the border into Afghanistan, including people who were born in Pakistan decades ago and had built lives and created businesses there.

Last year alone, 2.9 million people returned to Afghanistan, the U.N. refugee agency has said, with nearly 80,000 having returned so far this year.

Abdul Qahar Afghan reported from Kabul, Afghanistan. Associated Press writers Riaz Khan and Rasool Dawar in Peshawar, Pakistan, Eduardo Castillo in Beijing, Elena Becatoros in Athens, Greece, and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, also contributed to this story.