Hillary Clinton will testify this Thursday, February 26, before members of the House Oversight Committee as part of a congressional investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. On Friday, the 27th, it will be Bill Clinton’s turn, marking the first time that a former president will be forced to testify before the United States Congress since Gerald Ford in 1983. The hearings will take place not at the Capitol, but in Chappaqua, the city in New York State where the Clintons live, and will be behind closed doors and not public as the couple intended. However, Republican Congressman James Comer, who chairs the committee, said transcripts of their testimony will be made public.
These two days of testimony come after months of arm wrestling between Bill and Hillary Clinton and James Comer. The former president’s testimony was initially requested for last October and then rescheduled for December, with Bill Clinton refusing to appear. A new subpoena set a new date for January 13, which the Democrat also missed.
As for the former Secretary of State, her testimony was initially scheduled for October 9th, then changed to December 18th and again to January 14th, and she did not appear on either date.
The couple argued that the subpoenas were legally invalid and that with them the Republicans intended to carry out a campaign of political retaliation aligned with Donald Trump. They ended up giving in earlier this month after being warned that they would be considered in contempt of Congress, arguing that their statements should be public to demonstrate to Americans that they had nothing to hide and, at the same time, minimize the politicization of their statements in the face of a Republican majority.
“I’ve requested full disclosure of Epstein’s files. I’ve given sworn testimony about what I know. And this week, I agreed to appear before the committee in person. But that’s still not enough for Republicans on the House Oversight Committee,” Bill Clinton wrote in X on the 6th. “Now President Comer says he wants cameras, but only behind closed doors. Who benefits from this deal? Not Epstein’s victims, who deserve justice. Not the public, who deserve the truth. This only serves partisan interests. This is not fact-finding, it’s pure politics.”
In the same publication, the former president assured that he would not “stand idly by while they use me as a pawn in a power play in a closed-door sham court, orchestrated by a terrified Republican Party. If you want answers, let’s stop the games and do it the right way: in a public hearing, where the American people can see for themselves what this is really about.” The Clintons were unable to make their statements public, but they will be recorded and transcribed, with Comer assuring that the transcripts will be made public.
In an interview last week with the BBC, Hillary Clinton, in turn, accused the Trump administration of a “cover-up” regarding the release of files on Jeffrey Epstein. “Release the files. They’re stalling,” he said.
The former US Secretary of State also stated that she and her husband were being used to divert attention from the current president. “Just look at this smokescreen. We will have the Clintons, even Hillary Clinton, who never met the guy,” he said, going on to say that he met with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s partner who is serving a 20-year sentence for conspiracy to commit child abuse and sex trafficking of teenagers, “on a few occasions.”
Bill Clinton, in turn, who appears several times in the files released by the Department of Justice, confirmed that he knew Jeffrey Epstein, but assured that he had cut off contact with him two decades ago. Both deny having knowledge of the sexual crimes committed at the time by the late businessman.
“No one is accusing the Clintons of any wrongdoing,” James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said recently. “We just have a lot of questions.”
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