House Oversight Chairman Rejects Bill Clinton’s Offer To Talk About Epstein Privately To Fend Off Contempt of Congress Charges

President Clinton is offering to privately answer questions for the chairman and ranking member of the House Oversight Committee in an apparent attempt to avoid contempt of Congress charges against the former commander-in-chief. Mr. Clinton and his wife, Hillary Clinton, have refused to testify before the panel after being subpoenaed in the Jeffrey Epstein probe. The Oversight Committee launched an investigation into Epstein last year in response to a bipartisan effort to force the Justice Department to disclose all records related to the deceased sex offender. As part of the committee’s probe, lawmakers subpoenaed a number of top government officials who were involved with Epstein in some way, either as investigators, prosecutors, or personal associates of the finance executive. Mr. Clinton fell into the latter category, having traveled with Epstein several times on his private jet. The former president has long maintained that all of the trips were related to charitable works. Mr. and Mrs. Clinton previously offered to answer written questions for the committee, though the chairman, Congressman James Comer, said that that was not sufficient. When they declined to appear for their respective depositions, Mr. Comer announced that he would begin contempt of Congress proceedings. In an attempt to avoid that, Mr. Comer says Mr. Clinton offered to meet with him and the committee’s top Democrat, Congressman Robert Garcia, in private. Both men would be allowed to bring two staff members each and there would be no official transcript of the meeting, according to Mr. Comer. “Former President Clinton has a documented history of parsing language to evade questions, responded falsely under oath, and was impeached and suspended from the practice of law as a result,” Mr. Comer said in a statement on Tuesday. “The absence of an official transcript is an indefensible demand that is insulting to the American people who demand answers about Epstein’s crimes.”Mr. Comer also says Mrs. Clinton must testify because of her work as secretary of state on anti-sex trafficking matters and because she met Epstein’s associate, Ghislaine Maxell.Mr. and Mrs. Clinton’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “The House Oversight Committee rejects the Clintons’ unreasonable demands and will move forward with contempt resolutions on Wednesday due to their continued defiance of lawful subpoenas,” Mr. Comer said Tuesday. If the contempt resolutions are passed by the committee on Wednesday, they are expected to move to the House floor next week. Should those resolutions be adopted by the full House, then the Justice Department would have grounds to prosecute both the former president and the former secretary of state. Contempt prosecutions have become especially political in recent decades, meaning that the DOJ will likely not take up any such matters if it would impact an ally or family member of the sitting president at the time. Attorney General Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress, but was never prosecuted during the Obama administration. Mr. Comer drafted a resolution to hold Hunter Biden in contempt in 2024, though he predicted that it would never be taken up by the Justice Department during President Biden’s term. The Oversight Committee chairman told the New York Sun at the time that he was expecting the next Republican administration’s DOJ to prosecute Mr. Biden, though Hunter Biden was later preemptively pardoned by his father.If Mr. or Mrs. Clinton — or both — are held in contempt, prosecuted, and convicted for defying their respective subpoenas, they could face up to a year in prison, though given that neither has a criminal record, they would likely face a number of weeks at a minimum-security facility at the most. A former aide to President Trump, Steve Bannon, served four months in prison for defying a congressional subpoena. Current White House trade advisor Peter Navarro served the same sentence.

House Oversight Chairman Rejects Bill Clinton’s Offer To Talk About Epstein Privately To Fend Off Contempt of Congress Charges

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