WASHINGTON — The Republican-led House Oversight Committee announced Tuesday that it will seek to hold former President Bill Clinton in contempt of Congress after he failed to appear for a deposition as part of the panel’s probe into the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“As a result of Bill Clinton not showing up for his lawful subpoena, which again was voted unanimously by the committee in a bipartisan manner, we will move next week in the House Oversight Committee markup to hold former President Clinton in contempt of Congress,” Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., told reporters Tuesday morning on Capitol Hill.
The committee had scheduled a deposition with Clinton for Tuesday morning, as well as a deposition with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for Wednesday.
In a letter to Comer, the Clintons said they didn’t plan to appear for the depositions.
“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 Clintons wrote. “For us, now is that time.”
The Clintons also addressed the prospect of the committee voting to hold them in contempt.
“We expect you will direct your committee to seek to hold us in contempt,” they wrote, adding, “You will say it is not our decision to make. But we have made it. Now you have to make yours.”
Comer subpoenaed the Clintons to appear for depositions for testimony related to the former president’s relationship with Epstein. The committee originally scheduled the couple’s depositions for last October.
On Tuesday, Comer said that the panel voted on a bipartisan manner, unanimously, to subpoena them.
“No one’s accused of Bill Clinton of any wrongdoing. We just have questions,” Comer said, “And that’s why the Democrats voted along with Republicans to subpoena Bill Clinton.”
In December, Comer said he would postpone the depositions for a second time because the Clintons needed to attend a funeral, but he said the Clintons’ lawyer, David Kendall, was “unwilling to provide any alternative dates” for their testimony, so he was setting the depositions for mid-January.
Former President Clinton’s spokesperson, Angel Ureña, said of Comer in December, “For months, we’ve been offering the same exact thing he accepted from the rest, but he refuses and won’t explain why. Make of that what you will.”
Hillary Clinton’s spokesperson, Nick Merrill, also said in statement last month, “Since this started, we’ve been asking what the hell Hillary Clinton has to do with this, and he hasn’t been able to come up with an answer.”
The first set of Epstein files released by the Department of Justice in December contained numerous pictures of Bill Clinton, who Ureña said had flown on Epstein’s plane for Clinton Foundation trips in the early 2000s, before Epstein was charged with any sex crimes. There were a series of undated pictures, for example, with Epstein’s girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, and what looked like a trip to Thailand. It’s unclear when the photos were taken.
Former President Clinton has denied any wrongdoing and has said he was unaware of Epstein’s crimes. He has said that he cut ties with Epstein before Epstein was accused in 2006 of having sex with a minor. Ureña said in December that all photos and references to Clinton in the government’s files should be released.
Ureña said in a post on X after the release that the “White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton. This is about 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. Never has, never will be.”
Before the files were publicly released, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that she had read the Epstein case file and said Trump “was wrong” to suggest that there was anything incriminating about Clinton in the records.
The Justice Department has said it is still reviewing millions of pages of files “potentially” related to Epstein for possible release.
