After a Throw-Down Challenge From Hillary, House Republicans Reject Clintons’ Demand To Testify Publicly in Epstein Probe

House Republicans on the Oversight Committee say President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will not be testifying publicly about their ties to Jeffrey Epstein, a demand they have been making for days now. Instead, they will be deposed behind closed doors, just as other witnesses have been, at the end of the month — something Ms. Clinton is calling an “exercise in distraction.”The Clintons have been battling with the committee and its chairman, Congressman James Comer, for months. The panel is seeking answers from the former first couple about what they knew about Epstein, his sex trafficking of underage girls, and his connections to powerful individuals. Mr. Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane multiple times. After refusing to appear before the committee and instead requesting that they be able to submit sworn declarations instead, they were faced with the threat of being held in contempt of Congress, which can carry up to one year in prison. Shortly before the House was set to vote on the contempt resolutions, they agreed to sit for the depositions, neither of which will have a time limit. Mrs. Clinton is due to be deposed on February 26. Her husband will come in the following day. In a statement released Thursday, Republicans on the committee say the Clintons will be treated no differently than other witnesses in the investigation. “We’ve consistently released full transcripts of each interview or deposition we’ve done. The Clintons were subpoenaed for depositions, not a public hearing,” the committee wrote on X. “The Clintons are going to Clinton and try to spin the facts,” the panel wrote in a separate post. “These terms are no different than any other deposition we have held on this case — even with Republicans like former AG Bill Barr and Secretary Alex Acosta.” “[T]hey pretended that we were moving the goalpost when they received, along with the subpoenas, the House deposition guidance that explicitly mentions video recordings,” the committee said. “We are going to get answers for the American people. The full truth.”The committee’s public condemnation of the Clintons came hours after Mrs. Clinton began posting online about Mr. Comer being disingenuous. The former presidential nominee — who maintains she never knew anything about Epstein’s crimes or the crimes of his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell — said Thursday that the depositions should instead be public hearings before the committee, rather than closed-door interrogations by the committee’s lawyers. “For six months, we engaged Republicans on the Oversight Committee in good faith. We told them what we know, under oath,” she wrote, referring to their sworn declarations submitted to the committee. “They ignored all of it. They moved the goalposts and turned accountability into an exercise in distraction.”“If you want this fight, @RepJamesComer, let’s have it — in public,” she continued. “You love to talk about transparency. There’s nothing more transparent than a public hearing, cameras on. We will be there.”The committee has consistently released video footage from all of their closed-door depositions and transcribed interviews going back several months, including during the investigation into President Biden’s staff using the autopen to put his signature on documents. The latest tranche of Epstein files — which includes millions of pages of documents and discloses countless interactions Epstein had with some of the most famous and powerful people in the world — have Republicans and Democrats clamoring for more answers. Mr. Comer told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson on Thursday that his committee may next call billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who met with Epstein several times over the course of years, to come in for a deposition. One person who has expressed dismay at the ongoing investigation is President Trump. He has called on the Justice Department to both only investigate Democrats found in the files and to drop the probe altogether. Reacting to the news that Mr. Clinton would be deposed later this month, Mr. Trump said he was disappointed. “It bothers me that somebody’s going after Bill Clinton. See, I like Bill Clinton. I still like Bill Clinton,” he said in an Oval Office interview with NBC News on Wednesday. “I liked his behavior towards me. I thought he got me — he understood me.”

After a Throw-Down Challenge From Hillary, House Republicans Reject Clintons’ Demand To Testify Publicly in Epstein Probe

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