Clintons Capitulate on House Epstein Inquiry, Agreeing to Testify

Former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, the ex-secretary of state, agreed to depositions they had long resisted days before the House was to vote to hold them in contempt.

Bill and Hillary Clinton agreed on Monday to testify in the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, capitulating to the demands of its Republican chairman days before the House was expected to vote to hold them in criminal contempt of Congress.

For months, the Clintons had been adamant that they would not comply with subpoenas from Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the panel’s Republican chairman, that they have described as invalid and legally unenforceable. They accused Mr. Comer of being part of a plot to target them as President Trump’s political adversaries and promised to fight him on the issue for as long as it took.

But after some Democrats on the panel joined Republicans in a vote to recommend charging them with criminal contempt, an extraordinary first step in referring them to the Justice Department for prosecution, the Clintons ultimately waved the white flag and agreed to fully comply with Mr. Comer’s demands.

In an email sent to Mr. Comer on Monday evening, attorneys for the Clintons said their clients would “appear for depositions on mutually agreeable dates” and asked that the House not move forward with a contempt vote, which had been slated for Wednesday.

“They negotiated in good faith. You did not,” spokesmen for the Clintons said in a statement. “They told under oath what they know, but you did not care. But the former president and former secretary of state will be there.”

For Mr. Clinton to testify in the Epstein investigation would be nearly unprecedented. No former president has appeared before Congress since 1983, when President Gerald R. Ford did so to discuss the celebration of the 1987 bicentennial of the enactment of the Constitution. When Mr. Trump was subpoenaed in 2022 by the select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, after he had left office, he sued the panel to try to block it. The panel ultimately withdrew the subpoena.

The Clintons’ move capped a monthslong battle between them and Mr. Comer. It was a victory for the Republican chairman’s efforts to shift the focus of his panel’s Epstein investigation away from Mr. Trump’s ties to Mr. Epstein and his administration’s handling of the matter and onto prominent Democrats who once associated with the disgraced financier and his longtime companion, Ghislaine Maxwell.

In a letter on Saturday to Mr. Comer, which was obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Clinton’s lawyers tried one more time to put some guardrails on potential interviews with the Clintons. They said that Mr. Clinton would agree to sit for a four-hour transcribed interview with the entire committee, something he had previously described as an inappropriate and unprecedented request to make of a former president.

The lawyers asked that Mrs. Clinton, who has said she never met or spoke to Mr. Epstein, be allowed to make a sworn declaration instead of testifying. But they said that she, too, would submit to an in-person interview if the committee insisted on it, “with appropriate adjustments for the paucity of information she has to offer in this matter,” according to the letter.

But Mr. Comer flatly rejected the offer, calling it “unreasonable” and arguing that four hours of testimony from Mr. Clinton was inadequate given that he was a “loquacious individual” who might seek to run out the clock.

“Your clients’ desire for special treatment is both frustrating and an affront to the American people’s desire for transparency,” Mr. Comer wrote in a letter to the Clintons’ lawyers on Monday that was also obtained by The New York Times.

In that letter, Mr. Comer also rejected the demand from Mr. Clinton that the scope of the interview be limited to matters related to Mr. Epstein. Mr. Comer said the former president “likely has an artificially narrow definition in mind” of what matters would be related to the Epstein investigation.

Mr. Comer said he had concerns that Mr. Clinton would refuse to answer questions about “his personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, ways in which they sought to curry favor with powerful individuals and alleged efforts to utilize his power and influence after his presidency to kill negative news stories about Jeffrey Epstein.”

In response to Mr. Comer’s letter, the Clintons on Monday evening agreed to all of Mr. Comer’s demands, removing any time limit on the deposition of Mr. Clinton or on the range of topics that Republicans could ask him about.

The only point of negotiation that Mr. Comer had previously been amenable to was conducting the interviews in New York, where the Clintons live and work.

Mr. Clinton was acquainted with Mr. Epstein, who died in prison in 2019, but has said he never visited Mr. Epstein’s private island and cut off contact with him two decades ago. Mr. Clinton took four international trips on Mr. Epstein’s private jet in 2002 and 2003, according to flight logs.

While some House Democrats last month voted with Republicans to hold the Clintons in contempt of Congress, others expressed disgust at the entire situation, and in particular about the inclusion of Mrs. Clinton.

“I’m not seeing anything to suggest she ought to be a part of this in any way,” Representative Kweisi Mfume, Democrat of Maryland, said at a hearing last month, noting that it looked like the former secretary of state had been included because “we want to dust her up a bit if we get her before this committee.”

The offer from the Clintons represented a total surrender after they made a defiant stand just weeks ago, vowing to fight back against an investigation they said was unfairly targeting them and holding them to a different standard from others.

“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 lengthy letter to Mr. Comer on Jan. 13. “For us, now is that time.”

Up until the final moment, the Clintons had been trying to negotiate with the House Oversight Committee behind the scenes to find a way for Mr. Comer to spare them the contempt vote and lift the subpoenas. They said that Mr. Comer and the top Democrat on the panel could interview Mr. Clinton under oath, an offer that the chairman also rejected, insisting that the former president appear before the entire committee for an open-ended, transcribed interview.

In recent days, a member of the Clintons’ legal team went so far as to track down Mr. Comer’s cellphone number and reach out to resolve how the Clintons could answer his committee’s questions, according to a person familiar with the negotiations

Mr. Comer never responded.

And even after the Clintons said they would agree to a transcript, Mr. Comer said there was no deal. The situation frustrated the Clintons and their allies.

Philippe Reines, a longtime adviser to the Clintons, said that the House Democrats who sided with Republicans in January and voted in favor of recommending that the House hold the Clintons in contempt were to blame for the ultimate outcome.

“Republicans are gonna Republican,” Mr. Reines said. “It’s the Democrats who are disappointing, navel-gazing like this is a legitimate exercise in law and democracy.”

He derided Democrats who he said could raise money off their votes by telling donors that they “stand with MAGA in chanting ‘lock them up.’”

Nine Democrats on the Oversight Committee joined Republicans last month in support of holding Mr. Clinton in contempt, while three Democrats backed holding Mrs. Clinton in contempt, teeing up votes on the House floor.

Many Democrats have been reluctant to be seen as defending anyone associated with the convicted sex offender — especially party figures who carry as much baggage as the Clintons.

For the Clintons, the entire saga was a continuation of the Republican assault on them that has been the background noise of their entire life on the national political stage.

In a letter they wrote to Mr. Comer in January, the Clintons accused him of potentially bringing Congress to a halt to pursue a politically driven process “literally designed to result in our imprisonment.”

Related Content