Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016, said overnight Monday into Tuesday that they will agree to testify before Congress about their ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, after months of confrontation with Republicans who control the House of Representatives.
The decision came just before the House was set to vote on holding the Clintons in contempt of Congress, an unprecedented step against a former president that would have opened the door to possible criminal charges against the couple.
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Hillary and Bill Clinton, the former president is the first ever required to testify before Congress
(Photo: Shawn Thew/ Reuters)
The Clintons were subpoenaed last August to appear before the House Oversight Committee as part of a Republican-led investigation into the Epstein case. For months, they refused to comply, arguing the effort was a political maneuver aimed at shielding Republican President Donald Trump, who, like Bill Clinton, had also been acquainted with Epstein.
The couple said they were willing to testify under their own conditions. They proposed that Bill Clinton testify under oath at his New York office and that Hillary Clinton submit a written statement. Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, a Republican, rejected those proposals and demanded that both appear in person before his committee.
After the Clintons refused to comply with the subpoena, the Oversight Committee last month recommended that the full House hold them in contempt of Congress. The move was seen as a setback for the couple, particularly because several Democratic members of the committee joined Republicans in supporting the recommendation.
That committee vote paved the way for a final vote in the full House. Republicans hold a narrow majority, 218 to 214, but only a simple majority would be required, and some Democrats had already backed the measure. Beyond the historical stigma — no former U.S. president has ever been convicted of contempt of Congress — approval would have allowed the Justice Department, led by officials appointed by Trump, to pursue criminal proceedings against Bill and Hillary Clinton. Contempt of Congress carries a potential penalty of up to one year in prison and a $100,000 fine. Trump ally Steve Bannon previously served four months in prison after being convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to appear before the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Late Monday, just before the House Rules Committee was set to advance the measure toward a floor vote, a spokesman for the Clintons announced they would appear before the Oversight Committee.
A spokesman for the Clintons said they had already provided sworn accounts of what they know, but that the committee had disregarded them. He said the former president and former secretary of state would now appear in person and that they expect a standard to be set that applies equally to all, a reference to the fact that no U.S. president has ever been compelled to testify before Congress. The statement also implied that Trump should face the same requirement. Following the announcement, the procedural vote scheduled in the Rules Committee was postponed.
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Clinton in a jacuzzi in photo released as part of Epstein files disclosure
(Photo: AFP PHOTO / US Department of Justice)
Comer said he was not yet prepared to drop the threat of a contempt vote, noting that the final terms of the testimony had not been agreed upon. “We don’t have anything in writing,” he told reporters at the Capitol, adding that he was open to the Clintons’ proposal but that it “depends on what they say.”
Bill Clinton, like many prominent figures and celebrities, maintained a social relationship with financier Jeffrey Epstein from the late 1990s through the early 2000s. Clinton has said he was unaware of Epstein’s sexual crimes against underage girls and has expressed regret over the association.
Last month, as part of the release of investigative files in the case, several embarrassing photographs of Clinton surfaced, including images showing him naked in a jacuzzi alongside a person whose face was obscured. The images do not establish his involvement in the sexual abuse of minors, and there is no known allegation against him in the Epstein case.