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Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are both scheduled to give testimony to the House Oversight Committee this week as part of the congressional committee’s probe into the late, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Hillary Clinton is meeting with the committee Thursday, with Bill Clinton’s testimony on the calendar for Friday. Both are taking place in Chappaqua, New York, according to a spokesperson for the committee.
On Thursday morning, committee Chair Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said he expected Hillary Clinton’s deposition to be “long” and Bill Clinton’s to be “even longer.”
“No one’s accusing at this moment the Clintons of any wrongdoing,” Comer said. “They’re going to have due process. But we have a lot of questions.The purpose of the whole investigation is to try to understand many things about Epstein. How did he accumulate so much wealth? How was he able to surround himself with some of the most powerful men in the world?”
Several photographs of Bill Clinton were included in the trove of files made public in December by the Justice Department. The former president had a well-documented relationship with Epstein in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The Clintons have said they had no knowledge that Epstein was sexually abusing underage girls before his arrest.
“We have a very clear record that we’ve been willing to talk about,” Hillary Clinton said in an interview with the BBC last week. “My husband has said, he took some rides on the airplane for his charitable work. I don’t recall ever meeting (Epstein).”
Epstein died by suicide in a New York City jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Officials believe that the disgraced financier abused more than 1,000 girls and young women.
The Clintons had initially been scheduled to testify last year, but that was postponed, launching a monthslong back-and-forth between the couple and committee Chair Rep. James Comer, R-Ky.
Last month, the House Oversight Committee voted to recommend contempt of Congress charges for the Clintons, but less than two weeks later, Comer announced that the couple had “caved” and agreed to “appear for transcribed, filmed depositions.” The Kentucky Republican said that a recording of each deposition “would be made public” afterward.
After that announcement, the Clintons called for their testimony to not take place behind closed doors.
“If they want answers, let’s stop the games & do this the right way: in a public hearing, where the American people can see for themselves what this is really about,” Bill Clinton said in a Feb. 6 post on X.
Comer accused the couple of “pushing a false narrative to play victim” in an interview the following day and indicated that the closed-door depositions would take place as planned.
Clintons’ depositions follow testimony of others in House probe
The Clintons’ deposition follows that of Victoria’s Secret co-founder Les Wexner, who spoke to lawmakers last week in New Albany, Ohio, as well as that of Epstein’s former girlfriend and longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell, who was deposed by video from the Texas prison camp where she is currently serving her 20-year prison sentence on sex trafficking charges
Comer has also indicated that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who has denied any wrongdoing, may be asked to testify as well.
As part of its investigation, the House Oversight Committee has made more than 30,000 documents public. Democrats on the congressional body in recent months have shared additional files, including photos of powerful men in Epstein’s orbit without corresponding caption information or context. The records have served to illustrate Epstein’s ties to high-profile figures in business, government and entertainment.
The Justice Department’s disclosure of records
The committee’s probe into Epstein is separate from the Justice Department’s release of millions of files, as required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Under the law passed overwhelmingly by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump in November, prosecutors were required to make public all of the files in its investigation into Epstein by Dec. 19 and then provide Congress with a report identifying the categories of records released and withheld, as well as summarizing redactions and their corresponding legal bases.
Several batches of documents were shared in December, and then last month, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Justice Department was releasing more than 3 million additional pages, 2,000 videos and 180,000 images in its final Epstein disclosure.
In response to the release, prosecutors have faced criticism that the trove of records has contained unredacted identifying information and images of sex abuse victims and that other names and documents were improperly redacted or withheld from the disclosures.
Among files reportedly missing from the trove are ones pertaining to a woman’s unverified accusation that Trump assaulted her when she was a minor in the 1980s, journalist Roger Sollenberger –– and subsequently NPR and The New York Times –– reported.
California Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said in a post on Bluesky on Tuesday that Democrats on the committee are opening a “parallel investigation into why these documents are missing.”
In response to a request for comment about the files, the Justice Department directed Spectrum News to a post on its Rapid Response X account, which contended that “NOTHING has been deleted” and that “ALL responsive documents have been produced unless a document falls within one of the following categories: duplicates, privileged, or part of an ongoing federal investigation.”
The White House referred any questions about the implementation of the Epstein Files Transparency Act to the DOJ, and pointed to a section of the department’s news release about its disclosure, which stated that “Some of the documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election.”
Fallout continues in U.S. and U.K.
Revelations stemming from the trove of records has led to fallout both in the U.S. and abroad. Most recently, Harvard University announced Wednesday that former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers will resign from his teaching role at the school amid a campus review of his ties to Epstein.
Meanwhile, in the U.K., British police arrested Peter Mandelson, a former U.K. ambassador to the United States, on Monday in a misconduct probe
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who was stripped of his princely title last year due to revelations about his relationship with Epstein, was arrested last week on suspicion of misconduct in public office amid allegations that he shared confidential documents with the late financier during his time as trade envoy.
Summers, Mandelson and Mountbatten-Windsor have all denied wrongdoing.
The Associated Press contributed to this reporting.
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Christina Santucci
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