House Republicans say they’ll seek to hold former President Bill Clinton in contempt of Congress after he failed to appear Tuesday for a closed-door deposition about his relationship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Mr. Clinton was subpoenaed to appear before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee at 10 a.m. Tuesday for a deposition about his involvement with Epstein, who committed suicide in jail in 2019 while awaiting prosecution on charges of sex trafficking underage girls.
Mr. Clinton’s lawyers informed the panel in writing on Monday they had deemed the subpoena “legally invalid.” Mr. Clinton was a no-show on Tuesday, instead opting to make public a letter he sent to Committee Chairman James Comer condemning his handling of the Epstein probe, the GOP’s stewardship of their congressional majority and President Trump’s agenda.
“Everyone has to decide when they have seen or had enough and are ready to fight for this country, its principles, its people, no matter the consequences. For us, now is that time,” Mr. Clinton wrote. The letter was also signed by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Mr. Comer, Kentucky Republican, told reporters outside of the hearing room that following Mr. Clinton’s decision not to appear, the panel would vote next week to hold the former president in contempt of Congress.
“We’ve communicated with President Clinton’s legal team for months now, giving them opportunity after opportunity to come in to give us a day, and they continue to delay, delay, delay to the point where we had no idea whether they’re going to show up today or not. I think it’s very disappointing,” Mr. Comer said. “As a result of Bill Clinton not showing up for his lawful subpoena, which was voted on unanimously by the committee in a bipartisan manner, we will move next week in a House Oversight Committee markup to hold former President Clinton in contempt of Congress.”
Mrs. Clinton is scheduled to appear before the panel on Wednesday, but also is not expected to show up.
Records show Epstein visited the White House 17 times during Mr. Clinton’s presidency. The two remained friends for years after Mr. Clinton’s presidency ended and the former president was a frequent guest on Epstein’s private jet, flight logs show.
Mr. Clinton denies visiting Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean, where many of the sex crimes took place, although other witnesses said he was there.
In federal investigatory files related to Epstein’s criminal case recently made public by the Justice Department, Mr. Clinton appears in undated Epstein photos that appear to be from the 2000s.
One of the photos shows Mr. Clinton sitting in close proximity to a young woman on Epstein’s jet. Another shows him in a hot tub alongside an unidentified young woman and in a swimming pool with Epstein associate and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.
Democrats have accused Mr. Trump of concealing some of the Epstein files to protect revelations about his own former friendship with Epstein. Mr. Trump palled around with him prior to Epstein’s 2006 conviction on charges of soliciting prostitution from a minor, but said he banned him from his Mar-a-Lago club.
Republicans have also demanded Mr. Trump release all of the files, accusing the Justice Department of acting to protect wealthy individuals who victimized the girls.
In the letter to Mr. Comer, Mr. Clinton suggested he and Mrs. Clinton are political targets and said they, too, have called for the full release of the files, including those that reference Mr. Clinton. Mr. Clinton has asserted he knew nothing of the sex trafficking and played no role in it.
Mrs. Clinton’s representatives said they do not know why the panel subpoenaed her.
Mr. Clinton said the GOP-led panel only forced testimony from seven of the eight people subpoenaed by the Oversight panel in addition to them, and that they are being singled out for political reasons.
“Despite everything that needs to be done to help our country, you are on the cusp of bringing Congress to a halt to pursue a rarely used process literally designed to result in our imprisonment. This is not the way out of America’s ills, and we will forcefully defend ourselves,” the Clintons wrote. “Indeed, bringing the Republicans’ cruel agenda to a standstill while you work harder to pass a contempt charge against us than you have done on your investigation this past year would be our contribution to fighting the madness.”
The letter condemned the Trump administration’s agenda, including efforts to deport illegal immigrants and the shooting of a protester earlier this month in Minneapolis, which the couple characterized as the killing “of an unarmed mother by an ICE agent.”
