Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said they would not show up for their closed-door depositions this week as part of a House committee’s investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Bill Clinton skipped testifying before the Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday and faces the possibility of being held in contempt of Congress. Hillary Clinton is scheduled to testify on Wednesday. If she does not appear, she could be held in contempt, as well.
The panel issued subpoenas for the Clintons, along with several former attorneys general and FBI directors, in August to testify about their knowledge of and connections to Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell. But the committee scheduled and rescheduled deposition dates — and the Clintons have yet to give sworn testimony.
Bill Clinton appeared in photos among the Epstein documents released by the Justice Department last month.
“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. For us, now is that time,” the Clintons wrote in a letter to the House oversight chair, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky.
In the letter, the Clintons said they had provided the committee with the “little information we have,” adding that “we’ve done so because Mr. Epstein’s crimes were horrific.”
In a video posted by the committee Tuesday, an empty witness chair is shown in a hearing room with Bill Clinton’s nameplate on the table. Comer says in the video that the panel will formally launch contempt-of-Congress proceedings against the former president “for defying the law.”
Speaking to reporters earlier Tuesday, Comer said, “No one’s accusing Bill Clinton of anything, any wrongdoing,” adding, “We just have questions, and that’s why the Democrats voted along with Republicans to subpoena Bill Clinton.
Despite the letter from the Clintons, Comer told reporters: “Hillary Clinton is supposed to show up tomorrow. We’ll see what happens there.”
The representative noted that the subpoenas for the Clintons were authorized through a bipartisan vote by the committee, even though the overall effort has been driven largely by Republican lawmakers.
“This wasn’t something that I just issued as chairman of the committee,” he said.
In a social media post on Tuesday with pictures attached of Bill Clinton, Epstein and some redacted individuals, Comer said, “Epstein’s survivors deserve justice and answers.”
The Clintons were scheduled to give testimony last month, but they requested and received a postponement, citing scheduling conflicts, including attendance at a funeral.
Punishment for criminal contempt of Congress, a federal misdemeanor, can include a fine of up to $100,000 and imprisonment for 1 to 12 months.
The Clintons said in their letter that they are prepared to make their legal case and accused Comer of launching a 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,” the Clintons wrote.
The battle over testimony comes amid broader congressional efforts to unearth documents and evidence linked to Epstein’s sexual assault scandal. The committee subpoenaed the Justice Department for files under the Epstein Files Transparency Act and received tens of thousands of pages of materials from the Epstein estate, some of which included previously unseen images of Epstein with various high-profile individuals.
The Justice Department was required to publicly release all the files by Dec. 19, but last week a court filing revealed that more than 2 million Epstein documents are still being reviewed.
Bill Clinton was likely to be pressed on his past interactions with Epstein. He appeared in several of the photographs released on Dec. 19 with Epstein, Maxwell and individuals whose identities were redacted. One image shows him seated with a redacted woman on his lap, while another depicts him in a jacuzzi with a redacted person.
The materials released did not include context for the images such as when or where they were taken.
In a statement, Angel Ureña, deputy chief of staff for Bill Clinton, last month accused the White House of “shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever.”
“So, they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton,” Ureña said. “Never has, never will be.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told MS NOW on Tuesday that he would support holding the former president in contempt for defying a Congressional subpoena.
“I would support that. I think clearly he’s defied a subpoena of Congress. I’m not sure what the other remedy would be,” Johnson said. “I mean, it’s a contempt, it shows contempt for Congress, and he’s not spoken to that issue to any extent. And I think people are owed answers.”
Mychael Schnell contributed to this report.
Ebony Davis is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked at CNN as a campaign reporter covering elections and politics.