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Washington — Former President Bill Clinton will appear before the House Oversight Committee in New York on Friday as part of its investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, marking the first time a former president has been compelled to testify to Congress under subpoena.
The closed-door deposition is a victory for Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, who won the monthslong battle against Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had vowed to fight the effort. But the Clintons ultimately relented after a bipartisan vote in the committee to recommend holding the couple in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to testify.
Bill Clinton’s appearance comes a day after Hillary Clinton spent hours with the committee. According to Republicans, Hillary Clinton repeatedly said some of the questions asked of her should instead be directed toward her husband.
“The number of times that she said, ‘I don’t know. You’ll have to ask my husband,’ was was more than a dozen,” Comer said Thursday.
The former president has appeared in photos with Epstein that have been released in recent months and took a handful of trips with him decades ago, but has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
In a sworn declaration submitted to the committee last month, Bill Clinton said Epstein offered his private plane to the former president, his staff and his Secret Service detail in support of the Clinton Foundation’s philanthropic work between 2002 and 2003. He denied ever visiting Epstein’s private island in the Virgin Islands, where a number of the late financier’s alleged crimes occurred, and maintained that he had not been in contact with Epstein for more than a decade before his 2019 arrest.
“While Mr. Epstein may very well have attended any of the many hundreds of White House events or receptions during my eight years in office and been photographed with me as were tens of thousands of individuals, I do not recall encountering Mr. Epstein, or any specific interactions with him, while in office,” Bill Clinton said in the declaration.
The former president also did not recall when he met convicted Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell or his interactions with her, but said she later was in a relationship with a mutual friend.
“To be clear, I had no idea of Mr. Epstein’s or Ms. Maxwell’s criminal activities,” the declaration said. “And, irrespective of any intent either may have ever had, I did not take any action for the purpose of helping them to avoid any type of scrutiny.”
In her deposition Thursday, Hillary Clinton reiterated that she had no knowledge of Epstein or Maxwell’s crimes. When asked by reporters after the deposition whether she was confident her husband also had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes, Hillary Clinton responded, “I am.”
“The chronology of the connection that he had with Epstein ended years, several years before anything about Epstein’s criminal activities came to light,” she said.
Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the panel, said Thursday afternoon as the deposition was ongoing that Hillary Clinton was “answering all the questions.” Republicans also said after the day ended that she answered everyone’s questions.
Ahead of Bill Clinton’s testimony, Garcia said the committee had “now set a new precedent about talking to presidents and former presidents.” He demanded that President Trump be “immediately” asked to appear before the committee to testify about his own connections with Epstein.
Mr. Trump’s name appears thousands of times in the Epstein files released by the Justice Department. He has denied any wrongdoing.
But Comer said Mr. Trump has already answered questions from the press about his relationship with Epstein.
“President Trump has answered hundreds, if not thousands of questions from you all about Epstein, and I think he’s been very transparent in releasing the documents,” Comer told reporters Thursday.
The president’s answers to the press are not under oath. Mr. Trump, who called the effort to release the Epstein files a “hoax,” eventually supported their release after Democrats and a few Republicans forced a vote on compelling the Justice Department to make them public.
Former presidents have not successfully been compelled to testify before Congress in the past. But several have voluntarily answered questions from committees, including Presidents Gerald Ford in 1983, Harry Truman in 1955 and William Howard Taft a dozen times. Several sitting presidents have also appeared voluntarily.
