Former US President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton agreed to testify in an investigation into the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein late on Monday, possibly averting a planned vote to hold them in contempt of Congress.
“They look forward to setting a precedent that applies to everyone,” Clinton spokesperson Angel Urena said on X.
The Republican-led House Oversight Committee had recommended contempt proceedings saying, ‘Clintons are not above the law’, after the couple declined to appear in person.
They labelled the probe politically motivated and aimed at protecting Republican President Donald Trump, who is also named in the Epstein files.
“They negotiated in good faith. You did not,” Urena said. “They told you under oath what they know, but you don’t care.”
The Rules Committee on Monday evening moved to temporarily halt the planned vote on contempt proceedings, which could have led to a substantial fine and even incarceration, after the Clintons agreed to testify.
Chair of the committee, Republican James Comer, said the couple had agreed to testify but had not yet provided dates or finalised terms.
“I will clarify the terms they are agreeing to and then discuss next steps with my committee members,” Comer said.
Who was Jeffrey Epstein?
Epstein, a New York financier, was accused of running a years-long sex abuse ring involving underage girls. He was convicted in 2008 of soliciting sex from minors.
He died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on further sex trafficking charges.
His associate Ghislaine Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking after being convicted of grooming girls for Epstein. She is currently in a lower-security facility in Texas after being transferred from a Florida prison last year.
DOJ released more Epstein files
Last week, the US Justice Department released more than three million pages of documents and more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images related to Epstein, including those withheld from an initial release of documents in December.
These detailed his ties to prominent figures across politics and business.
However, some Congressional Democrats argued that Friday’s trove of files is only about half of the files that have been collected and only released ‘after review and redactions’.
“They don’t want a serious interview, they want a charade,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said.
US President Donald Trump had long resisted any attempts to release federal government documents pertaining to Epstein. Trump was friends with Epstein in both the 1990s and 2000s. The convicted sex offender had also visited the White House several times in the 1990s when Clinton was president.
However, Trump acquiesced to some documents being released after the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed both houses of Congress almost unanimously in November.
There is so far no direct evidence tying Trump or Clinton
DW
