Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday refused to testify as part of House Republicans’ investigation into deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his various political ties.
The Clintons’ refusal to testify comes despite threats from House Oversight Chairman James Comer to hold them in contempt of Congress if they fail to appear by a Tuesday deadline for the former president and a Wednesday deadline for the former secretary of state.
“Every person has to decide when they have seen or had enough and are ready to fight for this country, its principles and its people, no matter the consequences,” the political power couple wrote in a letter to Comer. “For us, now is that time.”
The Clintons sent an eight-page legal letter to Comer explaining why they considered the committee’s subpoenas “invalid and legally unenforceable.” They have maintained they have no knowledge relevant to Comer’s investigation.
Clinton was friends with Epstein and his partner, imprisoned sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. Visitor logs show Epstein visited Clinton’s White House at least 17 times over a two-year span, while flight logs show the former president flew on Epstein’s jet 26 times over the course of their friendship, which ended in 2003. The Clintons appeared in numerous photos with Epstein released as part of the Department of Justice’s statutorily required document dump.
While Clinton’s name has been floated in litigation related to Epstein’s crimes, no credible allegations of misconduct have been raised against the former president from his years in Epstein’s social circle.
Comer is demanding that the Clintons appear for live depositions behind closed doors, but the pair noted they have already provided the committee with sworn statements that were similar to those that Comer had accepted from a handful of other former law enforcement officials who he had also subpoenaed but later excused from testifying before the committee.
In turn, the Clintons accuse Comer in their letter of attempting to bring Congress to a halt to pursue a politically driven process “literally designed to result in our imprisonment.”
“We are confident that any reasonable person in or out of Congress will see, based on everything we release, that what you are doing is trying to punish those who you see as your enemies and to protect those you think are your friends,” they said.
They predicted Comer will seek to hold them in contempt and to also “release irrelevant, decades-old photos that you hope will embarrass us.”
The House Oversight Committee confirmed Tuesday morning that the Clintons “have not confirmed their appearances for their subpoenaed depositions” and that “If the Clintons do not appear for their depositions, the House Oversight Committee will begin contempt of Congress proceedings.”
In November, President Trump directed the Department of Justice to investigate prominent Democratic politicians and donors linked to Epstein, including Clinton, as Trump himself faced public scrutiny over his own ties to the disgraced financier.
Trump was friends with Epstein, who died by suicide in a New York City jail in August 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges, from the 1990s to the mid-2000s.
Epstein’s political connections have become a hot-button topic in politics in recent months, particularly after the Trump administration initially declined to release the federal government’s files on Epstein. The administration did, however, release its assessment of the files, which explicitly noted that authorities “did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”
After the administration declined to release the files, House Oversight opened its own investigation and Congress ultimately voted to compel the DOJ to release all of its Epstein files, an effort that passed with support from Trump.
The government released a select handful of highly-redacted files last month, but overall failed to meet the 30-day deadline set by Congress to turn over the files, which passed on December 12.