Hillary Clinton delivered a withering rebuke to a congressional committee investigating her supposed links to Jeffrey Epstein on Thursday, accusing its Republican members of embarking on a “fishing expedition” intended to cover up and deflect attention from the actions of Donald Trump.

In a furious opening statement, the former secretary of state suggested the event was “partisan political theatre” and “an insult to the American people” while repeating her insistence that she had never met Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex trafficker who died in 2019.

“You have compelled me to testify, fully aware that I have no knowledge that would assist your investigation, in order to distract attention from President Trump’s actions and to cover them up despite legitimate calls for answers,” she said, according to remarks she shared during the closed-door testimony.

Clinton’s onslaught came on the first day of a session that will also include a deposition on Friday by her husband, Bill Clinton, the former US president. The hearing is being staged at an arts center near the couple’s home in Chappaqua in upstate New York.

The Clintons reluctantly agreed to appear in response to a subpoena from the committee’s Republican chair, James Comer, after being threatened with contempt of Congress charges.

In her opening statement, Clinton excoriated the proceedings as “designed to protect one political party and one public official, rather than to seek truth and justice for the victims and survivors”.

Referencing her own career campaigning against sex trafficking, she added: “If this committee is serious about learning the truth about Epstein’s trafficking crimes, it would not rely on press gaggles to get answers from our current president on his involvement; it would ask him directly under oath about the tens of thousands of times he shows up in the Epstein files.

“If the majority was serious, it would not waste time on fishing expeditions. There is too much that needs to be done. What is being held back? Who is being protected? And why the cover-up?”

The hearing was temporarily suspended at the request of Clinton’s legal team after a photo of her giving testimony was shared on social media. It was later reported that the picture, posted by the Maga influencer Benny Johnson, had been taken by Lauren Boebert, one of the committee’s Republican members. It is against the rules for witnesses or lawmakers to take pictures during closed-door congressional hearings. Democrats condemned the breach as “unacceptable”.

Boebert defended her conduct on social media after the disruption.

“No US ambassadors were harmed in the taking of today’s photo,” she wrote, in a reference to the storming of a US diplomatic compound in the Libyan city of Benghazi in 2012, which happened when Clinton was secretary of state and resulted in the deaths of four Americans.

Clinton resumed her testimony to the House of Representatives’ oversight committee shortly afterwards.

Robert Garcia, the committee’s ranking Democrat, said that during the interruption, Clinton had called for the hearing to be opened to the media.

Speaking after her committee testimony, Clinton told press gathered outside she would have preferred the testimony be public, but was distressed about agreed-upon rules being disregarded by the committee.

“They had a chance to do it in public and I wish they had done it in public,” she said, adding that she found their questions to be very repetitive. “I don’t know how many times I had to say I did not know Jeffery Epstein,” she said. “It is on the record numerous times.”

Clinton told reporters that the questions also veered off-topic and “got quite unusual”, with questions about UFOs and Pizzagate, a repeatedly discredited conspiracy theory linking the Democratic party to a pedophilia ring.

She also expressed frustration about the way the investigation was being handled. “No Republican members asked any questions about Jeffery Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell to anyone else they have disposed,” she said.

The Clintons have previously complained they are being singled out unfairly to distract public attention from Trump, who had a long friendship with Epstein before breaking with him. They wanted the testimony to be given in public, rather than released in later in video and accompanying transcripts, as is planned.

Speaking during an afternoon break in proceedings, Garcia said Hillary Clinton had answered every question and called for transcripts of her deposition to be released within 24 hours. “The American people have a right to know exactly what she said, what questions were asked of her and how she responded,” he said.

Bill Clinton is scheduled to give testimony under identical circumstances on Friday, as representatives investigate links with Epstein that he has acknowledged and which are confirmed in files released by the justice department under congressional mandate.

Committee members have travelled to Chappaqua for the proceedings after it was agreed that the Clintons would not have to testify on Capitol Hill. Written transcripts and video footage from the depositions are expected to be released in the coming days.

Addressing journalists outside the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center, where the Clinton hearings are being staged, Republicans and Democrats vied for control of the narrative surrounding the files.

Comer, the committee chair, accused the Clintons of trying to avoid a subpoena when other public figures – including Bill Barr and Alex Acosta, members of the first Trump administration – had responded willingly.

“The Clintons haven’t answered very many, if any, questions about their knowledge or involvement with Epstein and [Ghislaine] Maxwell,” Comer said. “Again, no one is accusing at this moment the Clintons of any wrongdoing. They’re going to have due process. But we have a lot of questions, and the purpose of the whole investigation is to try to understand many things about Epstein.”

Garcia told reporters that he supported Bill Clinton being asked to address the committee but said Democrats would now demand that Trump testify following disclosures that files relating to a woman alleging he had sexually assaulted her when she was a minor had been excluded from the documents released.

He said: “Let’s get President Trump in front of our committee to answer the questions that are being asked across this country, from survivors, from those have been brutally attacked and raped, sometimes as children.”

Hillary Clinton’s summons has prompted accusations that the depositions are a partisan exercise intended to deflect scrutiny of Trump’s long association with Epstein.

James Walkinshaw, a Virginia Democrat on the committee, said: “There is no indication – zero, zip, zilch, nada – that Secretary Clinton had any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes. My fear is we’re here today as part of a political exercise, part of a long running fever dream where Republicans want to lock up Secretary Clinton.”

Both Clintons have deep experience in facing Republican-led inquisitions and have often emerged in politically stronger positions.

Hillary Clinton testified for nine hours in 2015 to a House select committee investigating the Benghazi attack. Her appearance was widely deemed to have neutralized Republican attacks and boosted her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Bill Clinton provided two sworn testimonies in 1998 resulting from a Republican-driven independent counsel investigation.

One related to sexual harassment allegations brought by Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee. He also gave grand jury testimony over allegations that his testimony in the previous hearing about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern, amounted to perjury and obstruction of justice.

Bill Clinton has denied any wrongdoing and has called for all files relating to Epstein to be released. About 3m documents are believed to be still in the justice department’s possession, in violation of the terms of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Clinton acknowledges flying four times on Epstein’s private plan, nicknamed “the Lolita Express”, and appears in several photographs in the files, including one showing him and Epstein in a hot tub with a woman whose identity is redacted.

He says he cuts ties with Epstein in 2006 as the financier’s sexual crimes became known.