The House Oversight Committee will seek to hold former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress after she did not appear for a scheduled deposition as part of the Republican-led panel's investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, Chairman James Comer announced Wednesday.
The move comes a day after Comer said the committee would seek to hold former President Bill Clinton in contempt for failing to appear for his scheduled deposition Tuesday.
“We’re going to hold both Clintons in criminal contempt of Congress,” Comer told reporters Wednesday morning.
The Oversight Committee will vote on both contempt measures next Wednesday and then bring them to the House floor, he said.
The committee had negotiated in good faith with the Clintons' attorneys for five months, Comer said.
"We have bent over backwards," he said.
The committee subpoenaed the Clintons last year. They were scheduled to appear in October, but that was later pushed to December because of their attendance at a funeral. Comer said the Clintons’ lawyer did not provide alternative dates, so he rescheduled their depositions for mid-January.
In a letter to Comer on Tuesday, the Clintons argued that the subpoenas were “legally invalid” and said they did not plan to appear for depositions. The letter cited legal analysis prepared by two law firms, which they said they provided to the committee Monday.
“Every person has to decide when they have seen or had enough and are ready to fight for this country, its principles and its people, no matter the consequences,” the Clintons wrote. “For us, now is that time.”
The letter also said the Clintons expected the committee to vote to hold them in contempt, saying that “you will say it is not our decision to make. But we have made it. Now you have to make yours.”
The Clintons' lawyers, Ashley Callen and David E. Kendall, wrote in a separate letter to Comer on Monday that the subpoenas were "invalid and legally unenforceable" because they are "untethered to a valid legislative purpose, unwarranted because they do not seek pertinent information, and an unprecedented infringement on the separation of powers."
On Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said of the Clintons, “I think it would be contempt of Congress if they didn’t turn up.”
Hillary Clinton’s spokesperson Nick Merrill questioned the committee’s approach in a statement last month, saying, “Since this started, we’ve been asking what the hell Hillary Clinton has to do with this, and he hasn’t been able to come up with an answer.”
Hillary Clinton has not been accused of any wrongdoing related to Epstein, and her name has not appeared in the thousands of files the Justice Department has released so far after the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed.
The first set of files, released last month, included numerous pictures of Bill Clinton, who is also not accused of any wrongdoing. Clinton has said he cut ties with Epstein, the late sex offender, before Epstein was accused of having sex with a minor in 2006.
The Justice Department said in a court filing last week that more than 2 million Epstein files have yet to be released. The statutory deadline to release all of the files was Dec. 19.
