Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are set to appear before the House Oversight Committee this week to further the investigation into the files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The former president is scheduled for Tuesday, with Hillary Clinton set for Wednesday. The committee announced last week that if the couple does not appear for their depositions that the committee will hold them in contempt of Congress.
“The Clintons have not confirmed their appearances for their subpoenaed depositions,” a House Oversight Committee spokeswoman said in a statement. “They are obligated under the law to appear and we expect them to do so. If the Clintons do not appear for their depositions, the House Oversight Committee will initiate contempt of Congress proceedings.”
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The committee subpoenaed the two last August after the issue surrounding Epstein heated up and plagued Washington for months. The Clintons previously had depositions set last year but delayed their testimony.
Bill Clinton has been called to testify after he had high-profile run-ins with Epstein, including 17 White House visits during the former’s presidency, according to the New York Post, though less is known about Hillary Clinton’s relationship with the pair. Epstein is listed as a donor of $10,000 in 1993 to the White House Historical Association in the then-first lady’s documents, which discussed renovations to the White House.
Last year, former girlfriend and convicted sex offender in Epstein’s trafficking scheme Ghislaine Maxwell mentioned her interactions with Bill Clinton multiple times over the course of her interview with a senior Justice Department official, where she claimed that the former president never went to Epstein’s famous island. Maxwell also added she never saw Hillary Clinton and Epstein together.
“President Clinton was my friend, not Epstein’s friend,” Maxwell told the DOJ at one point.
“He never, absolutely never went,” she later said of Bill Clinton going to the island. “And I can be sure of that because there’s no way he would’ve gone — I don’t believe there’s any way that he would’ve gone to the island, had I not been there. Because I don’t believe he had an independent friendship, if you will, with Epstein. I didn’t see President Clinton being interested in Epstein. He was just a rich guy with a plane.”
Maxwell was not the only one who said there was no evidence Bill Clinton visited Epstein’s island.
“You know, in the case of Bill Clinton, as far as I was aware, there was no evidence that he visited the island,” former Attorney General Bill Barr stated in a transcribed interview conducted by the committee last year. “You know, the government did not obtain any such evidence.”
The former president was among many who wrote a birthday note in a 2003 birthday card to Epstein, put together by Maxwell.
“It’s reassuring isn’t it, to have lasted as long, across all the years of learning and knowing, adventures and [illegible word], and also to have your childlike curiosity, the drive to make a difference and the solace of friends,” Clinton’s note wrote.
Epstein’s pilot, who testified in Maxwell’s trial, listed both Trump and Clinton on the list of those who flew on his private plane, adding that he would be given a notice if high-profile individuals were flying.
Clinton’s spokesperson then admitted to the former president being aboard the plane but claimed he knew nothing about the crimes being committed.
“In 2002 and 2003, President Clinton took a total of four trips on Jeffrey Epstein’s airplane: one to Europe, one to Asia, and two to Africa, which included stops in connection with the work of the Clinton Foundation,” Clinton spokesman Angel Urena wrote in 2019.
A 2002 photo surfaced — just about a year after the former president left office — of him receiving a massage from an Epstein accuser getting off a long flight to Africa, on the sex offender’s plane. Clinton received the massage from then-22-year-old Chauntae Davies, who served as Epstein’s personal masseuse.
Davies told the Daily Mail of the interaction, “Although the image looks bizarre, President Clinton was a perfect gentleman during the trip, and I saw absolutely no foul play involving him.” She has come forward as a victim of Epstein’s, saying she was repeatedly raped.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the Clintons for comment.
Hillary Clinton’s run-ins have been less high profile.
From 2007 to 2008, Maxwell’s nephew, Alexander Djerassi, worked on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign as a policy associate. Djerassi also served under the former secretary of state as chief of staff in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. Following his tenure as chief of staff, he was brought back on in 2016 to work on the transition team as Hillary Clinton was the Democratic presidential nominee, before Trump beat her in 2016.
In 2010, Maxwell attended Chelsea Clinton’s wedding, a year after sexual abuse accusations against her emerged. The former associate confirmed her attendance in her interview with the senior DOJ official. She claimed she attended with her then-boyfriend Ted Waitt, who was a friend of Bill Clinton.
In 2013, Maxwell was honored for her ocean conservation work by the Clinton Global Initiative, two years after Bill Clinton’s staff recommended banning her from events.
As part of the investigation, the committee has released multiple batches of documents related to the DOJ files, many of which came from the committee’s subpoena to Epstein’s estate.
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The investigation has continued despite the House forcing a vote on a full release of the files, leading to the bill being signed into law. While the Justice Department has released rounds of the files, some have pushed back saying they have not complied with the law.
Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY), who led the bill to release the files, called on a federal judge to appoint a special master to oversee the DOJ’s release of files last week.