Bill and Hillary Clinton have declared themselves above the law as they refused to testify before Congress on Jeffrey Epstein.
The ex-president was scheduled to testify at a closed-door deposition in the House Oversight Committee’s bipartisan investigation into Epstein at 10am Tuesday but failed to show. Hillary was slated to appear on Wednesday.
House Oversight’s Republican chair James Comer promised to bring contempt proceedings next week, setting off a potentially protracted and politically fraught legal battle that would be the first time in history a former president has been held in contempt by Congress.
In an astonishing letter to Comer, the Clintons launched a broadside at Donald Trump and the Republican lawmakers carrying out his ‘cruel agenda.’
They claimed a legal analysis proved they were not required to testify and insisted the subpoenas were an extension of Trump’s ‘weaponization’ of the law.
‘The Justice Department has been used as a weapon, at the direction of the President, to pursue political opponents. And most recently and searingly, an ICE agent killed an unarmed mother only days ago,’ the Clintons wrote.
‘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. For us, now is that time.’
The Clintons cited precedent set by Trump in October 2022, when he defied a congressional subpoena demanding his testimony over the Capitol riot.
‘A legal analysis prepared by two law firms and provided to you yesterday makes clear your subpoenas are legally invalid,’ the Clintons 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.
‘We call on you to release that analysis to the public to allow them to see how this is yet another example of the casual disregard of the law of the land.
‘All the while, you have done nothing with your oversight capacity to force the Department of Justice to follow the law and release all its Epstein files, including any material regarding us as we have publicly called for.’
Only three former presidents, Trump, Harry Truman and John Tyler, and one sitting president, Richard Nixon, have been formally subpoenaed by Congress to testify. Trump, Truman and Nixon all refused to comply, while Tyler appeared voluntarily.
The Supreme Court has never definitively ruled on whether a president can be compelled to give testimony to Congress, though the DOJ has historically argued that presidents have ‘testimonial immunity’ to protect the separation of powers.
By relying on the precedent set by Trump, the Clintons are testing whether the courts will treat ex-presidents as a special class above ordinary private citizens.
Contempt of Congress has taken on greater weight in recent years.
Two Trump allies, Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, were both sentenced to four months in federal prison for defying subpoenas from the January 6 Committee.
Bannon was jailed for refusing to provide testimony as a private citizen, while Navarro failed in his attempt to claim ‘executive privilege’ without a formal invocation from the president.
Both men actually served their sentences, underscoring that defiance can carry real legal consequences. The charge is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison and fines of up to $100,000.
Comer told reporters: ‘As a result of Bill Clinton not showing up for his lawful subpoena, which was voted unanimously by the committee in a bipartisan manner, we will move next week … to hold former President Clinton in contempt of Congress.’
Clinton has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein but had a well-documented friendship with the financier throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.
Republicans have zeroed in on that relationship as they try to wrestle control over demands for a full accounting of Epstein’s wrongdoing, amid pressure on Trump.
Epstein, once a friend of Trump, was convicted of sex crimes and later jailed pending trial for allegedly trafficking underage girls.
The financier died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial, a death officially ruled a suicide but long the subject of conspiracy theories amplified by Trump’s supporters.
The Clintons were subpoenaed in August alongside other current and former officials, including former FBI director James Comey.
Their depositions were initially scheduled for October, then delayed twice – once after Bill Clinton said he needed to attend a funeral.
Clinton’s spokesman Angel Urena has accused Comer of singling out the former president, saying his legal team offered the same terms accepted for other witnesses.
Hillary Clinton’s office has questioned why she was subpoenaed at all, saying the committee had failed to explain the relevance of her testimony.
The dispute comes amid controversy over the Trump administration’s handling of Epstein-related records.
Weeks after a legal deadline to release the Epstein files, the Justice Department has offered up only one percent of the total archive, angering Trump supporters who had expected sweeping disclosures.
Those documents included multiple photographs of Bill Clinton from the early 2000s.
The former president has acknowledged traveling on Epstein’s private plane during Clinton Foundation trips before the financier was charged with any sex crimes, but denies wrongdoing and says he cut ties years before Epstein’s 2006 arrest.
No evidence has emerged implicating either Bill or Hillary Clinton in criminal conduct related to Epstein.
