Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knew nothing about Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking and weren’t his close friends.
That’s what an army of lawyers representing the Clintons told House Republicans who are threatening to hold the former first couple in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify in an Epstein probe.
The eight-page letter signed by six lawyers argued the subpoenas issued to the Clintons by the GOP-led House Oversight and Government Reform panel were legally invalid. The panel’s threat to hold them in contempt of Congress next week for refusing to testify in person, the lawyers wrote, is an attempt to publicly “harass and embarrass them.”
And in any case, the lawyers wrote, neither Mr. Clinton nor Mrs. Clinton knows much about Epstein or his one-time girlfriend and associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who helped organize the sex trafficking ring and is now serving a 20-year prison sentence.
“President and Secretary Clinton have already provided the limited information they possess about Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell to the Committee,” lawyers from the firms Jenner & Block and Williams & Connolly wrote.
The legal team claimed Mr. Clinton, who, according to flight logs, traveled at least 17 times on Epstein’s private jet and accompanied him on overseas trips, wasn’t a good friend of the wealthy investor and “does not recall” speaking to him for more than a decade before his arrest on federal sex trafficking charges.
Mrs. Clinton, the lawyers said, doesn’t remember ever speaking to Epstein, nor was she a “good friend” of Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s one-time girlfriend and associate who is now serving a 20-year prison sentence.
House investigators want to interview the Clintons about their relationship with Epstein and Maxwell as part of a broader probe into who may have participated in victimizing girls in the sex trafficking ring. The Clintons have refused to appear for closed-door depositions and instead provided the committee with written statements.
Epstein was connected to a circle of powerful people, among them the Clintons, documents and photographs show.
Maxwell is pictured with Mr. Clinton and Epstein in several photos from the 1990’s. Epstein was a frequent White House visitor, according to logs that show he signed in as a guest at least 17 times between 1993 and 1995.
Mr. Clinton and Epstein remained friends for years after Mr. Clinton’s presidency ended, and Epstein donated funds to the Clinton Foundation, House investigators said. Mr. Clinton denies visiting Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean, where prosecutors say many of the sex crimes took place, although other witnesses said they saw the former president there.
In federal investigatory files recently made public by the Justice Department, Mr. Clinton appears in undated Epstein photos from the 2000’s. One of them shows a young woman, purportedly an Epstein sex trafficking victim, on Epstein’s jet, sitting on Mr. Clinton’s lap. Another shows the ex-president in a hot tub alongside an unidentified young woman. A third photo shows Mr. Clinton in a swimming pool with Maxwell and another female whose face is obscured.
Mr. Clinton denies any wrongdoing.
In December, a Clinton spokesman said the former president cut ties with Epstein in 2005, more than a year before Epstein took a plea deal on charges of soliciting prostitution from a minor.
Maxwell, however, was a guest at first daughter Chelsea Clinton’s 2010 wedding.
Lawyers for the Clintons said the subpoenas and the threat of contempt violate the separation of powers clause in the Constitution by attempting to force a former president to testify before Congress.
A House committee aide said the letter will not stop the Oversight panel from voting next week on holding both Clintons in contempt of Congress for failing to show up at closed-door depositions this week.
“Bipartisan subpoenas issued to the Clintons are not suggestions. They are legally required to appear before the House Oversight Committee, yet they have defiantly delayed and denied their legal obligations,” Mr. Comer said.
