Clintons refuse to testify in House Epstein probe as Republicans threaten contempt proceedings

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that they will refuse to comply with a congressional subpoena to testify in a House committee's investigation of Jeffrey Epstein even as Republican lawmakers prepare contempt of Congress proceedings against them.

The Clintons, in a letter released on social media, slammed the House Oversight probe as “legally invalid” and wrote that the chair of the House Oversight Committee, Republican Rep. James Comer, is on the cusp of a process “literally designed to result in our imprisonment.”

“We will forcefully defend ourselves,” wrote the Clintons, who are Democrats. They accused Comer of allowing other former officials to provide written statements about Epstein to the committee, while selectively enforcing subpoenas against them.

The intensifying clash adds another dimension to the fight over Epstein, raising new questions about the limits of congressional power to compel testimony. It also comes when Republicans are grappling with the Justice Department’s delayed release of the Epstein files after a bipartisan push for their release.

Comer said he’ll begin contempt of Congress proceedings next week. It potentially starts a complicated and politically messy process that Congress has rarely reached for and could result in prosecution from the Justice Department.

“No one’s accusing the Clintons of any wrongdoing. We just have questions," Comer told reporters after Bill Clinton, a onetime Epstein friend, did not show up for a scheduled deposition at House offices Tuesday.

He added, “Anyone would admit they spent a lot of time together.”

Clinton has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein but had a well-documented friendship with the wealthy financier throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Republicans have zeroed in on that relationship as they wrestle with demands for a full accounting of Epstein's wrongdoing.

“We have tried to give you the little information we have. We’ve done so because Mr. Epstein’s crimes were horrific,” the Clintons wrote in the letter.

Epstein was arrested in 2019 on federal sex trafficking and conspiracy charges. He killed himself in a New York jail cell while awaiting trial.

Multiple former presidents have voluntarily testified before Congress, but none has been compelled to do so. That history was invoked by President Donald Trump in 2022, between his first and second terms, when he faced a subpoena by the House committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, riot by a mob of his supporters at the U.S. Capitol.

Trump's lawyers cited decades of legal precedent they said shielded an ex-president from being ordered to appear before Congress. The committee ultimately withdrew its subpoena.

Comer also indicated that the Oversight committee would not attempt to compel testimony from Trump about Epstein, saying that it could not force a sitting president to testify.

Trump, a Republican, was also friends with Epstein. He has said he cut off that relationship before Epstein was accused of sexual abuse.

Comer cast the subpoena for the Clintons as a bipartisan effort. But when a subcommittee of the Oversight panel initiated its overall investigation into Epstein in August, it adopted the subpoenas for the Clintons without allowing Democrats to cast individual votes.

The Justice Department also has not completely fulfilled the committee's subpoena for its files on Epstein.

Meanwhile, the congressional co-sponsors of legislation that forced the public release of investigative documents in the sex trafficking probe of Epstein and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell asked a New York judge in a letter to appoint a neutral expert to oversee release of the materials. The letter, dated Jan. 8, was delivered to the judge Monday night.

U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, and Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, told U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer they had “urgent and grave concerns” that the Justice Department has failed to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required the files to be released last month. They said they believed “criminal violations have taken place” in the release process.

Engelmayer presides over the Maxwell case. Maxwell, a former Epstein girlfriend, is serving a 20-year prison sentence after her 2021 sex trafficking conviction for recruiting girls and women to be abused by Epstein and for sometimes joining in the abuse. Last month, Maxwell sought to set aside her conviction, saying new evidence had emerged proving constitutional violations spoiled her trial.

Justice Department officials, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday, have said the files' release was slowed by redactions required to protect the identities of abuse victims.

In their letter, Khanna and Massie wrote that the Department of Justice's release of 12,000 documents out of more than 2 million documents being reviewed was a “flagrant violation” of the law's release requirements and had caused “serious trauma to survivors.”

“Put simply, the DOJ cannot be trusted with making mandatory disclosures under the Act,” the congressmen said as they asked for the appointment of an independent monitor to ensure all documents and electronically stored information are immediately made public.

They also recommended that a court-appointed monitor be given authority to notify and prepare reports about the true nature and extent of the document production and whether improper redactions or conduct have taken place.

Engelmayer directed the Justice Department and Maxwell, if she wishes, to respond to the allegations from the congressmen by Friday.

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Associated Press writers Michael R. Sisak and Larry Neumeister in New York contributed to this report.