President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will not sit for their scheduled depositions before the House Oversight Committee in the coming days, a source on the committee tells the New York Sun. The committee is delaying the meetings, though the subpoenas issued for their testimony over the summer are still in effect.
Mr. Clinton, who was scheduled to sit for his deposition next Tuesday, was friends with notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein for several years after he left the White House in 2001. Mrs. Clinton was supposed to appear for her deposition tomorrow.
The Oversight Committee source tells the Sun that they are “having conversations with the Clintons’ attorneys to accommodate their schedules” in order to find a new time to meet with the former first couple.
The panel began their investigation into the so-called Epstein files earlier this year, after the Justice Department claimed in a memo that there were no additional records that they were going to release to the public. The firestorm from conservatives was immediate, and within days, a bipartisan bill to force the disclosure of files started to gain steam.
The Oversight Committee’s chairman, Congressman James Comer, then launched his probe in an effort to control the investigation rather than have Congress vote on the forced disclosure bill.
In August, Mr. Comer issued subpoenas for the Clintons, several former U.S. attorneys general, two former FBI directors, and the federal prosecutor who granted Epstein a non-prosecution agreement.
“The Committee may use the results of this investigation to inform legislative solutions to improve federal efforts to combat sex trafficking and reform the use of non-prosecution agreements and/or plea agreements in sex-crime investigations,” the committee wrote to Mr. Clinton in August. “Given your past relationships with Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell, the Committee believes that you have information regarding their activities that is relevant to the Committee’s investigation.”
In September, the committee released their first tranche of records which they had gotten from the Justice Department. Those documents included the infamous “birthday book” Epstein received from his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell. She had hundreds of letters, drawings, and photographs put together which she had received from friends.
In that book, there were messages apparently from Mr. Clinton and President Trump, though Mr. Trump denies that he ever sent such a letter.
Mr. Clinton’s handwritten note was relatively brief. “Happy 50th,” the former president wrote to Epstein in 2003. “It’s heartening, isn’t it, to have lived so long, across all the years of learning and knowing, adventure and work, and still to have your childlike curiosity, the drive to make a difference, and the circle of friends.”
The first publicly known instance of Epstein being in the same room as the Clintons was in 1993, when Epstein and other donors were invited to the White House after giving money to help refurbish parts of the presidential home. Mr. Clinton next dined with Epstein at an intimate donor dinner at Palm Beach hosted by billionaire Ron Perelman. Other attendees included singer Jimmy Buffett and actor Don Johnson.
Mr. Clinton and Epstein would grow closer after the president left the White House in January 2001. They traveled together multiple times for trips related to the ex-president’s charitable works.
MATTHEW RICE
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