Under Threat of Contempt, Clintons Agree to Testify in Epstein Inquiry

The Clintons have agreed to testify in the House Oversight Committee’s inquiry into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein after months of asserting that they have been targeted as part of a politically motivated effort to shift attention away from President Donald Trump’s ties to Epstein and the Justice Department’s controversial handling of documents related to the investigation.

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Read More: How the Latest Release of Epstein Files Was Felt Around the World

Lawyers for former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a Monday evening email to the committee’s chairman Rep. James Comer (R, Ky.) that their clients agreed to “appear for depositions on mutually agreeable dates.” The submission, which was first reported by the New York Times, came just before a scheduled House vote to hold them in criminal contempt of Congress, which was slated for Wednesday.

The Clintons had been seeking to negotiate terms with Comer to avoid a contempt vote, including to introduce constraints to the duration and scope of questioning, but ultimately agreed to comply with all of Comer’s demands.

“They negotiated in good faith. You did not. They told you under oath what they know, but you did not care,” Angel Ureña, a spokesperson for Bill Clinton, said on social media. “But the former president and former secretary of state will be there. They look forward to setting a precedent that applies to everyone.”

“As has been the committee’s practice, please confirm the House will not move forward with contempt proceedings, as the chairman stated in his letter this morning,” the Clintons’ attorneys said in the letter to Comer.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D, Calif.), the top Democrat on the committee, told reporters that there isn’t “any scenario” in which Comer can reject their agreement and move forward with the vote.

“If you try to move forward” on a contempt vote,” Garcia said, “it would be clearly a demonstration that Comer is actually not interested in hearing the Clintons, but he’s only interested in political games. I think that would be a huge disservice to the survivors and to the investigation.”

But Comer’s office told news outlets that the Clintons “provided no dates for their depositions,” and that Comer plans to clarify the terms of the agreement before discussing “next steps” with committee members. It is not yet clear whether the contempt vote will move forward.

The last time that a former President testified before a congressional panel was when Gerald Ford appeared to discuss a commemorative project for the bicentennial of the Constitution in 1983. Trump was subpoenaed in 2022 to testify in the congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, but the panel eventually withdrew the subpoena after he sued to block it.

Clintons say political persecution

The committee voted to subpoena the Clintons last August as part of its investigation into Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of sex trafficking and is serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison. Clinton has appeared in photos with Epstein in documents slowly released by the DOJ, and previously released flight logs show that Bill Clinton took four international trips on board Epstein’s private jet in 2002 and 2003, accompanied by staff and Secret Service agents, although it’s not clear how many individual flights were part of each trip.

The Clintons for months refused to comply with the subpoenas, arguing that they were legally invalid and were an attempt to target Trump’s political adversaries.

Amid scrutiny of Trump by both Democrats and some of his MAGA base over his appearances in the Epstein files, the President has sought to focus attention on associations between Epstein and prominent Democrats. Bill Clinton has said that he had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes, never visited his private island, and ended his association with him 20 years ago, long before the disgraced financier’s death in 2019. Hillary Clinton has said that she “has no personal knowledge of Epstein or Maxwell’s criminal activities, never flew on his aircraft, never visited his island, and cannot recall ever speaking to Epstein.”

“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 in a Jan. 13 letter to Comer. “For us, now is that time.”

In the letter, the Clintons accused Comer of unfairly targeting them by pursuing a “rarely used process literally designed to result in our imprisonment.”

“You subpoenaed eight people in addition to us. You dismissed seven of those eight without any of them saying a single word to you. You made no attempt to force them to appear. In fact, since you started your investigation last year, you have interviewed a total of two people,” they wrote. “You claim your subpoenas are inviolate when they are used against us yet were silent when the sitting President took the same position, as a former president, barely more than three years ago.”

The Clintons have repeatedly called for the Justice Department to release all of its Epstein files, as it was required to do by law by Dec. 19, including any materials that may contain references to them.

But last month, nine Democrats on the Oversight Committee joined Republicans in January to recommend charging Bill Clinton with criminal contempt and three Democrats joined to do the same for Hillary Clinton. Criminal contempt of Congress is a mechanism that the House or Senate can use to penalize a person for wilfully refusing to comply with a lawful or congressional subpoena. The vote itself does not impose penalties, but it would be the first step in formally referring them to the DOJ, which can then decide whether to pursue prosecution. If then convicted, a sentence would typically involve fines and/or up to a year in jail.

Most criminal contempt referrals to the DOJ have not resulted in prosecutions; of seven referrals from the House between 2019 and 2024, only two led to indictments. Steve Bannon, the former White House strategist during Trump’s first term, was indicted on two misdemeanor counts and convicted in July 2022 for refusing to comply with a subpoena investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. His conviction was upheld by a federal appeals court in May 2024 and he served four months in prison before being released in October. Trump’s chief trade adviser Peter Navarro was also indicted on two counts in June 2022 for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee. He was convicted by a jury in September 2023 and sentenced to four months in prison. He was released in July 2024 after completing his sentence.

The Clintons had still sought to negotiate with the committee in order to avoid a contempt vote, including offering for Comer and Garcia, the top Democrat on the panel, to interview Bill Clinton under oath. After Comer refused and said the Clintons must appear before the whole committee for a transcribed interview, the Clintons on Saturday tried to negotiate for a four-hour transcribed interview with the committee limited to questions related to Epstein for Bill Clinton and a sworn declaration instead of a testimony for Hillary Clinton, according to the Times.

Comer rejected the Clintons’ offers, calling Bill Clinton a “loquacious individual” and that four hours would therefore be insufficient for questioning. “Your clients’ desire for special treatment is both frustrating and an affront to the American people’s desire for transparency,” Comer wrote in a letter on Monday that was posted on social media.

On Monday evening, the Clintons relented, agreeing to comply with Comer’s demands.

Some Democrats have criticized the committee’s pursuit of the Clintons as an attempt to distract voters from Trump’s ties to Epstein and other concerns ahead of the 2026 midterms, especially in involving Hillary Clinton, who has been vilified by Trump and his allies since she ran against him in the 2016 presidential election.

“I’m not seeing anything to suggest she ought to be a part of this in any way,” Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D, Md.), a member of the Oversight Committee, said at a hearing in January. He added that it seemed the committee had included her because “we want to dust her up a bit.”

Recalling Trump’s 2016 chants against Hillary Clinton to “lock her up,” Philippe Reines, an adviser to the Clintons, told the Times that the Democrats who joined Republicans last month in voting to recommend the House hold the Clintons in contempt, “stand with MAGA in chanting ‘lock them up.’”