Bill and Hillary Clinton have agreed to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee as part of the panel’s investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, an Oversight aide said Monday evening.
It’s a remarkable reversal for the former president and secretary of state, who were adamant they would defy committee-issued subpoenas and risk imprisonment by the Trump Justice Department as the House prepared to vote Wednesday to hold them both in contempt of Congress.
After both skipped their scheduled depositions earlier this year, the Oversight Committee voted on a bipartisan basis in January to approve contempt measures for each of them.
Although both have said they had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes, they have maintained that the subpoenas were not tied to a legitimate legislative purpose, rendering them invalid. They also complained the GOP-led exercise was designed to embarrass and put them in jail.
It is not immediately clear when they will appear and if the House will continue to pursue the contempt votes.
“If you try to move forward, that would be insane,” the top Democrat on House Oversight, Rep. Robert Garcia of California, told reporters. “I mean, that would be unprecedented. It would be clearly — it would be clearly a demonstration that [Chair James] Comer is actually not interested in hearing the Clintons, but he’s only interested in political games. I think that would be a huge disservice to the survivors and to the investigation.”
