A quarter-century after leaving the White House, Bill and Hillary Clinton are hours away from one more legal showdown with House Republicans as they prepare to testify in a congressional investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
For the Clintons, the depositions this week mark a stunning reversal. After months of vigorously fighting to avoid testifying in what they denounced as a Republican plot against them, they agreed to comply only after the House was moving toward a bipartisan vote to hold them in criminal contempt of Congress.
The Clintons are expected to be joined by their lawyers, David Kendall and Cheryl Mills, who have been working through painstaking details of what areas could be covered during questioning. It was unclear who else from the Clinton team would join them at their respective depositions, officials said.
The depositions are scheduled to take place in Chappaqua, New York, where the Clintons live. Hillary Clinton will appear on Thursday and Bill Clinton on Friday. The location for the testimony was negotiated between Kendall and Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, in hopes of avoiding the indignity and precedent-setting move of summoning a former president to Capitol Hill for questioning.
“No one is accusing the Clintons of any wrongdoing,” Comer said. “We just have a lot of questions.”
To prepare, the Clintons have been hunkering down — at times together, at times separately — to refresh their memories about the Epstein years, but even more to defend themselves and plan lines of attack against potentially hostile questioners. Republicans have sought to make the Clintons a package deal, but their separate depositions underscore the potentially vast differences between any information the two could offer to the committee.
Bill Clinton traveled on Epstein’s private plane at least 16 times, and was pictured with women in a jacuzzi in files released by the US Department of Justice. He was also pictured with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend and accomplice in trafficking victims. Hillary Clinton has said she never met Epstein.
Bill Clinton has never been accused by law enforcement of any wrongdoing related to Epstein, and a spokesperson has repeatedly said he cut ties before Epstein’s arrest on federal charges in 2019 and was unaware of any crimes.
The former president and his lawyers are heading into their session on Friday with the expectation that he could be in for a long day of questioning, according to a source familiar with the process, possibly even longer than the five hours that Epstein associate Les Wexner sat for last week.
Epstein survivors and lawyers representing them that they believe it is important for the Clintons — the former president, in particular — to testify. In interviews, they stressed that the presence of an individual in the Epstein files and their cooperation with Congress does not indicate wrongdoing.
Still, Bill Clinton should share anything he knows about Epstein’s past with lawmakers, several survivors and lawyers said.
“He was connected to Epstein. He was the president of our country. I think the victims want to understand that link a little better,” Jennifer Plotkin, a lawyer who represents numerous Epstein survivors, told CNN. “Nobody should be above the law. If you’re served with a valid subpoena, you should comply.”
The Clintons wanted to be treated like other witnesses in the probe who were able to waive their subpoenas for in-person testimony for sworn written statements.
Republicans would not accept that, which Democrats charged was for political purposes.
The Clintons eventually tried to launch a blistering campaign against Comer, blasting out messages from the former president’s official office taking aim at the Republican chairman. They viewed the effort to seek their testimony as part of a partisan effort to take the focus of the Epstein probe away from President Donald Trump.
“Even though practice makes perfect, Jim Comer can’t even lie well,” one Clinton emailed statement read. “Call Jim Comer’s office and ask why the Epstein hearings are hidden from the public.”
What House Democratic leadership did not expect is that some of their own members would join Republicans to try to hold the Clintons in contempt.
Today, victims of Epstein hold far more sway with many Democratic lawmakers than a sense of loyalty to the Clintons.
“The survivors deserve transparency and justice,” Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib told. “We should hold anybody connected to Epstein in contempt who will not give us information, regardless of political party.”
