Bill and Hillary Clinton have agreed to testify before the House Oversight Committee as part of its investigation into convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein after facing significant pressure from President Donald Trump and his allies in Congress to testify.
Former President Bill Clinton’s deputy chief of staff Angel Ureña broke the news on Monday, writing in an X post in response to the House Oversight Committee, “They negotiated in good faith. You did not. They told you under oath what they know, but you don’t care. But the former President and former Secretary of State will be there. They look forward to setting a precedent that applies to everyone.”
The news comes just days before the House was expected to vote on holding them in criminal contempt of Congress for failing to comply with the committee’s subpoenas.
The Clintons had previously declined to comply, arguing that the subpoenas were legally unenforceable and committee chair Rep. James R. Comer was part of a plot to target them.
The letter, posted by the House Oversight Committee on X, reveals that as recently as Jan. 31, the Clintons had been seeking an alternative to testifying in front of the committee, including having the former president sit for a voluntary transcribed interview.
“After defying lawful subpoenas, Bill and Hillary Clinton are trying to dodge contempt by requesting special treatment. The Clintons are not above the law,” reads the post from the official House Oversight Committee account.
In a video of Comer speaking to the House Rules Committee posted to its X account, the Kentucky representative said, “Subpoenas are not mere suggestions. They carry the force of law, and require compliance.”
In an email sent on Monday, attorneys for the Clintons said that their clients would agree to testify on “mutually agreeable dates,” and asked that the House not hold its contempt vote on Wednesday, according to the New York Times. The Daily Beast has contacted a representative for the Clintons for comment.
The Clintons had previously been scheduled to give their depositions in December before their appearances were rescheduled for January, having initially been subpoenaed in August.
In November, President Donald Trump ordered the Justice Department to investigate Epstein’s ties to men like Clinton and Larry Summers.
“Now that the Democrats are using the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans, to try and deflect from their disastrous SHUTDOWN, and all of their other failures, I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him,” he wrote on Truth Social on November 14.
A spokesperson for Clinton at the time said, “These emails prove Bill Clinton did nothing and knew nothing. The rest is noise meant to distract from election losses, backfiring shutdowns, and who knows what else.”
Clinton then faced renewed scrutiny in December following the first dump of the Epstein files after a photograph of the former president posing with Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell was included.
Clinton, who maintained a relationship with Epstein for years, once again accused the White House of using him as a distraction.
“The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton,” Clinton said in a statement released via his press secretary.
“This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever. So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be.”
