Washington — The House Oversight Committee is voting Wednesday on holding former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in criminal contempt after the pair refused to appear before the Republican-led panel, which is investigating the Justice Department’s handling of the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
The committee began meeting shortly after 10 a.m. to consider the matter.
If the committee votes to recommend holding them in criminal contempt of Congress, the issue would advance to the full House for a vote on whether to find them in contempt and refer the matter to the Justice Department. The decision to prosecute would be up to the Justice Department, which would have to seek an indictment from a grand jury.
On Tuesday, House Oversight Republicans said the Clintons’ attorneys “made an untenable offer” for the GOP chairman and top Democrat on the committee to travel to New York to speak with Bill Clinton. The proposal allowed each lawmaker to bring two staff members and the meeting would not be transcribed, according to the committee. Republican Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the committee’s chairman, rejected the offer.
“The Clintons’ latest demands make clear they believe their last name entitles them to special treatment,” Comer said in a statement.
A Clinton spokesperson denied the transcript stipulation, saying “interviews are on the record and under oath.”
The committee subpoenaed the Clintons in August, along with former Justice Department officials dating back to George W. Bush’s administration. Since then, only Bill Barr, who served as attorney general during President Trump’s first term, has provided closed-door testimony to the committee, while the panel has accepted written statements from the others.
In letters to the committee last week explaining their decision not to appear, the Clintons and their legal team accused Comer of trying to embarrass and punish Mr. Trump’s political rivals. Their lawyers vowed to fight the subpoenas, calling them “invalid and legally unenforceable” because they did not have a valid legislative purpose.
“No one’s accusing Bill Clinton of any wrongdoing. We just have questions,” Comer told reporters last week.
Photos of Bill Clinton have appeared in the Epstein-related materials released by the Justice Department, along with references to the current president, though neither have been accused of wrongdoing.
The Clintons submitted sworn declarations to the committee last week describing their interactions with Epstein.
In his declaration, Bill Clinton said Epstein offered his private plane to the former president, his staff and his Secret Service detail in support of the Clinton Foundation’s philanthropic work between 2002 and 2003. He denied ever visiting Epstein’s private island in the Virgin Islands, where a number of the late financier’s alleged crimes occurred, and maintained that he had not been in contact with Epstein for more than a decade before his 2019 arrest.
Hillary Clinton, in her declaration, said she did not recall encountering Epstein or any specific interactions with him. She also said she never flew on his plane or visited his private island.
The Clintons also did not recall when they met convicted Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell or their interactions with her, but said she later was in a relationship with a mutual friend of theirs. They did not remember exactly when their last interaction with Maxwell was beyond “many years ago.”
“To be clear, I had no idea of Mr. Epstein’s or Ms. Maxwell’s criminal activities,” their declarations said.
“And, irrespective of any intent either may have ever had, I did not take any action for the purpose of helping them to avoid any type of scrutiny,” Bill Clinton’s declaration added.
Jonathan Shaub, a law professor at the University of Kentucky, said both Clintons have strong arguments for why they should not be compelled to testify, and the potential decision to prosecute puts the Justice Department in a tricky position that could have ramifications for Mr. Trump and officials in his administration if Democrats have control of Congress and the executive branch.
“There are some past Justice Department opinions that suggest, particularly with President Clinton, that a former president is immune from compelled congressional testimony,” Shaub, who worked in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during the Obama administration, told CBS News.
That argument would not apply to Hillary Clinton, though the committee would have to establish that it has a specific legislative interest in having her testify, Shaub said.
“That’s a harder argument to make given what exists in the public record,” Shaub said, referring to Hillary Clinton’s absence in the Epstein files that have been made public. “She would have stronger arguments in the prosecution to say that they don’t have a legislative interest here.”
In Tuesday’s statement, Comer said the committee is seeking testimony from Hillary Clinton “given her knowledge from her time as Secretary of State of the federal government’s work to counter international sex-tracking rings, her personal knowledge of Ms. Maxwell, and her family’s relationship with Mr. Epstein.”
