Former President Invoice Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton mentioned Tuesday that they may refuse to adjust to a congressional subpoena to testify in a Home committee’s investigation of Jeffrey Epstein at the same time as Republican lawmakers put together contempt of Congress proceedings towards them.
The Clintons, in a letter launched on social media, slammed the Home Oversight probe as “legally invalid” and wrote that the chair of the Home Oversight Committee, Republican Rep. James Comer, is on the cusp of a course of “actually designed to end in our imprisonment.”
“We are going to forcefully defend ourselves,” wrote the Clintons, who’re Democrats. They accused Comer of permitting different former officers to offer written statements about Epstein to the committee, whereas selectively implementing subpoenas towards them.
The intensifying conflict provides one other dimension to the battle over Epstein, elevating new questions concerning the limits of congressional energy to compel testimony. It additionally comes when Republicans are grappling with the Justice Division’s delayed launch of the Epstein information after a bipartisan push for his or her launch.
Attainable contempt of Congress proceedings
Comer mentioned he’ll start contempt of Congress proceedings subsequent week. It probably begins an advanced and politically messy course of that Congress has not often reached for and will end in prosecution from the Justice Division.
“Nobody’s accusing the Clintons of any wrongdoing. We simply have questions,” Comer instructed reporters after Invoice Clinton, a onetime Epstein good friend, didn’t present up for a scheduled deposition at Home places of work Tuesday.
He added, “Anybody would admit they spent quite a lot of time collectively.”
Clinton has by no means been accused of wrongdoing in reference to Epstein however had a well-documented friendship with the rich financier all through the Nineties and early 2000s. Republicans have zeroed in on that relationship as they wrestle with calls for for a full accounting of Epstein’s wrongdoing.
“We’ve tried to provide the little info we now have. We’ve finished so as a result of Mr. Epstein’s crimes have been horrific,” the Clintons wrote within the letter.
Epstein was arrested in 2019 on federal intercourse trafficking and conspiracy expenses. He killed himself in a New York jail cell whereas awaiting trial.
Subpoenas for former presidents
A number of former presidents have voluntarily testified earlier than Congress, however none has been compelled to take action. That historical past was invoked by President Donald Trump in 2022, between his first and second phrases, when he confronted a subpoena by the Home committee investigating the lethal Jan. 6, 2021, riot by a mob of his supporters on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump’s legal professionals cited many years of authorized precedent they mentioned shielded an ex-president from being ordered to seem earlier than Congress. The committee in the end withdrew its subpoena.
Comer additionally indicated that the Oversight committee wouldn’t try to compel testimony from Trump about Epstein, saying that it couldn’t power a sitting president to testify.
Trump, a Republican, was additionally mates with Epstein. He has mentioned he lower off that relationship earlier than Epstein was accused of sexual abuse.
Comer forged the subpoena for the Clintons as a bipartisan effort. However when a subcommittee of the Oversight panel initiated its total investigation into Epstein in August, it adopted the subpoenas for the Clintons with out permitting Democrats to forged particular person votes.
The Justice Division additionally has not fully fulfilled the committee’s subpoena for its information on Epstein.
Lawmakers need the Epstein information
In the meantime, the congressional co-sponsors of laws that pressured the general public launch of investigative paperwork within the intercourse trafficking probe of Epstein and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell requested a New York decide in a letter to nominate a impartial knowledgeable to supervise launch of the supplies. The letter, dated Jan. 8, was delivered to the decide Monday evening.
U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, and Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, instructed U.S. District Decide Paul A. Engelmayer they’d “pressing and grave issues” that the Justice Division has did not adjust to the Epstein Information Transparency Act, which required the information to be launched final month. They mentioned they believed “legal violations have taken place” within the launch course of.
Engelmayer presides over the Maxwell case. Maxwell, a former Epstein girlfriend, is serving a 20-year jail sentence after her 2021 intercourse trafficking conviction for recruiting women and girls to be abused by Epstein and for typically becoming a member of within the abuse. Final month, Maxwell sought to put aside her conviction, saying new proof had emerged proving constitutional violations spoiled her trial.
Justice Division officers, who didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark Tuesday, have mentioned the information’ launch was slowed by redactions required to guard the identities of abuse victims.
Of their letter, Khanna and Massie wrote that the Division of Justice’s launch of 12,000 paperwork out of greater than 2 million paperwork being reviewed was a “flagrant violation” of the regulation’s launch necessities and had triggered “severe trauma to survivors.”
“Put merely, the DOJ can’t be trusted with making necessary disclosures beneath the Act,” the congressmen mentioned as they requested for the appointment of an impartial monitor to make sure all paperwork and electronically saved info are instantly made public.
In addition they advisable {that a} court-appointed monitor be given authority to inform and put together experiences concerning the true nature and extent of the doc manufacturing and whether or not improper redactions or conduct have taken place.
Engelmayer directed the Justice Division and Maxwell, if she needs, to answer the allegations from the congressmen by Friday.
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Related Press writers Michael R. Sisak and Larry Neumeister in New York contributed to this report.
