A quarter-century after leaving the White House, Bill and Hillary Clinton are hours away from one more legal showdown with House Republicans as they prepare to testify in a congressional investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
For the Clintons, the depositions this week mark a stunning reversal. After months of vigorously fighting to avoid testifying in what they denounced as a Republican plot against them, they agreed to comply only after the House was moving toward a bipartisan vote to hold them in criminal contempt of Congress.
The Clintons are expected to be joined by their lawyers, David Kendall and Cheryl Mills, who have been working through painstaking details of what areas could be covered during questioning. It was unclear who else from the Clinton team would join them at their respective depositions, officials said.
The depositions are scheduled to take place in Chappaqua, New York, where the Clintons live. Hillary Clinton will appear on Thursday and Bill Clinton on Friday. The location for the testimony was negotiated between Kendall and Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, in hopes of avoiding the indignity and precedent-setting move of summoning a former president to Capitol Hill for questioning.
“No one is accusing the Clintons of any wrongdoing,” Comer said. “We just have a lot of questions.”
To prepare, the Clintons have been hunkering down — at times together, at times separately — to refresh their memories about the Epstein years, but even more to defend themselves and plan lines of attack against potentially hostile questioners. Republicans have sought to make the Clintons a package deal, but their separate depositions underscore the potentially vast differences between any information the two could offer to the committee.
Bill Clinton traveled on Epstein’s private plane at least 16 times, according to a CNN review, and was pictured with women in a jacuzzi in files released by the US Department of Justice. He was also pictured with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend and accomplice in trafficking victims. Hillary Clinton has said she never met Epstein.
Bill Clinton has never been accused by law enforcement of any wrongdoing related to Epstein, and a spokesperson has repeatedly said he cut ties before Epstein’s arrest on federal charges in 2019 and was unaware of any crimes.
The former president and his lawyers are heading into their session on Friday with the expectation that he could be in for a long day of questioning, according to a source familiar with the process, possibly even longer than the five hours that Epstein associate Les Wexner sat for last week. The depositions will be videotaped and Republican committee staff are aiming to release the video in a matter of days after the interviews are completed, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.
The Clintons and members of the House Oversight Committee have agreed to five topic areas for the depositions, a person familiar with the agreement told CNN. They are:
- alleged mismanagement of the federal government’s investigation into Epstein and Maxwell;
- the circumstances and subsequent investigations of Epstein’s 2019 death;
- the ways the federal government could effectively combat sex-trafficking rings;
- how Epstein and Maxwell sought to curry favor to protect their illegal activities;
- and potential violations of ethics rules related to elected officials.
Epstein survivors and lawyers representing them told CNN that they believe it is important for the Clintons — the former president, in particular — to testify. In interviews, they stressed that the presence of an individual in the Epstein files and their cooperation with Congress does not indicate wrongdoing.
Still, Bill Clinton should share anything he knows about Epstein’s past with lawmakers, several survivors and lawyers said.
“He was connected to Epstein. He was the president of our country. I think the victims want to understand that link a little better,” Jennifer Plotkin, a lawyer who represents numerous Epstein survivors, told CNN. “Nobody should be above the law. If you’re served with a valid subpoena, you should comply.”
Spokespeople for the Clintons did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
A different political climate
The mere fact the Clintons are scheduled to be deposed is a fresh reminder of how the Epstein saga is unlike any scandal from the Clinton era.
At first, the back-and-forth between Clinton attorneys and the committee happened behind the scenes, through email exchanges, letters and phone calls. The Clintons wanted to be treated like other witnesses in the probe who were able to waive their subpoenas for in-person testimony for sworn written statements.
Republicans would not accept that, which Democrats charged was for political purposes.
The Clintons eventually tried to launch a blistering campaign against Comer, blasting out messages from the former president’s official office taking aim at the Republican chairman. They viewed the effort to seek their testimony as part of a partisan effort to take the focus of the Epstein probe away from President Donald Trump.
“Even though practice makes perfect, Jim Comer can’t even lie well,” one Clinton emailed statement read. “Call Jim Comer’s office and ask why the Epstein hearings are hidden from the public.”
What House Democratic leadership did not expect is that some of their own members would join Republicans to try to hold the Clintons in contempt.
It’s a far different political climate today than in any of the other epic Clinton legal battles with the GOP: the impeachment of Bill Clinton over his statements about his relationship with a White House intern, the investigation of the 2012 attack on the US mission at Benghazi, Libya, or the investigation of Hillary Clinton conducting State Department business using a private email server.
Today, victims of Epstein hold far more sway with many Democratic lawmakers than a sense of loyalty to the Clintons.
“The survivors deserve transparency and justice,” Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib told CNN. “We should hold anybody connected to Epstein in contempt who will not give us information, regardless of political party.”
More than 40 current House Democrats were born in 1980 or later, giving them different memories of Bill Clinton’s presidency than party leaders who were in Washington when he ended 12 years of Republican control of the White House.
Even some loyal allies acknowledge it was a bit of a miscalculation for the Clintons to approach this like just another fight with Republicans.
“In hindsight, this was not the time for a scorched-earth campaign against Republicans,” a longtime Clinton adviser told CNN, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid alienating the former president and first lady. “The old team didn’t appreciate that so much has changed.”
House Democratic leaders encouraged their members to vote against the effort because the Clintons were still negotiating with the committee, sources told CNN at the time. They argued Republicans were singling out the Clintons to distract from how long the Justice Department was taking to release the Epstein files. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi privately chastised Democratic members for voting to hold the Clintons in contempt.
Nine Democratic members on the Oversight Committee still joined Republicans to support holding the former president in contempt of Congress. Three Democrats voted to hold Hillary Clinton in contempt.
Those who voted with Republicans argued that they wanted to preserve the power of a congressional subpoena and they wanted to show consistency for the survivors of Epstein who were calling on Congress to provide accountability, regardless of party.
“It was very difficult,” Rep. Yassamin Ansari, an Oversight Committee Democrat who didn’t take a firm position by voting “present,” recalled of the discussions Democrats were having around that time.
Ansari, 33, was born in 1992, the year Bill Clinton was first elected president and recalled growing up with the Epstein story.
“I think I understood different sides of the argument in this regard,” she said.
How both sides see this week’s depositions
Even before the contempt vote, both sides tried multiple off ramps. Comer pushed the deposition dates back as the two sides continued to engage. The Clintons proposed voluntary interviews in New York, but they wanted to control the topic, the length and who could attend. Then they pushed for the interviews to be conducted in the open.
“Every person has to decide when they have seen or had enough and are ready to fight for this country, its principles and its people, no matter the consequences. For us, now is that time,” the Clintons wrote in January when they announced they would not be appearing for their in-person scheduled depositions.
But Comer wanted the Clintons to appear on his terms. He moved forward with scheduling their depositions and when neither of them appeared, he decided to call a vote to hold the Clintons in criminal contempt of Congress, marking a major escalation in the bipartisan investigation.
Shortly after lawmakers advanced the contempt referrals of the Clintons out of committee, where it would have faced a glide path to final passage, the Clintons agreed in the 11th hour to Comer’s deposition terms and the contempt effort was called off.
“The Clintons completely caved,” Comer said at the time.
The top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Robert Garcia, told CNN ahead of the depositions that he always wanted to hear from the Clintons; it was just a matter of how they would get the testimony.
“I think they’re actually looking forward to it, from my understanding. They really want to put the information that they know out to the public,” Garcia said. “And I think we’re going to have a lot of questions answered, but I think they’ll also be able to be very clear about what information they and what they knew.”
Beyond asking Bill Clinton about his interactions with Epstein, Garcia said he wants to know whether Epstein had any ties to foreign intelligence or connections with foreign governments.
“I think the former president would be uniquely qualified to share that information,” Garcia said.
Democrats are broadly more skeptical of Republicans deposing Hillary Clinton, considering the former secretary of state said she never met Epstein.
“The only reason she is being deposed is because the Republicans continue to have fever dreams about locking her up,” Democratic Rep. James Walkinshaw of Virginia, a member of the Oversight Committee, told CNN. “It’s purely political.”
For all of the Republican glee about successfully getting depositions from the Clintons, a sense of unease has emerged among some Trump loyalists who fear a future Congress controlled by Democrats could more easily subpoena Trump or his family.
The president signaled his own weariness when asked about the Clintons earlier this month.
“I hate to see it, in many ways,” Trump told reporters. “I hate to see it, but then look at me, they went after me.”
But Comer maintains that Democrats will try to bring Trump in for a deposition if they reclaim the majority regardless of what steps he took.
“They’re going to go after Trump whether we depose the Clintons or not,” Comer told CNN.
Survivors have said that they are worried that if the Clintons had refused a congressional subpoena, it would have set a similar precedent for other individuals who are asked to sit for depositions.
“If they get away with it, then everybody’s going to follow in their footsteps,” survivor Sharlene Rochard told CNN.
Liz Stein, another Epstein survivor, added that the questioning should not end with the Clintons.
“Why is the focus just on the Clintons?” Stein said. “And why are we not focusing on the broader scope of the people that we need to get information from?”-CNN
