A quarter-century after leaving the White House, Bill and Hillary Clinton are hours away from one more legal showdown with House Republicans as they prepare to testify in a congressional investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
For the Clintons, the depositions this week mark a stunning reversal. After months of vigorously fighting to avoid testifying in what they denounced as a Republican plot against them, they agreed to comply only after the House was moving toward a bipartisan vote to hold them in criminal contempt of Congress.
The Clintons are expected to be joined by their lawyers, David Kendall and Cheryl Mills, who have been working through painstaking details of what areas could be covered during questioning. It was unclear who else from the Clinton team would join them at their respective depositions, officials said.
The depositions are scheduled to take place in Chappaqua, New York, where the Clintons live. Hillary Clinton will appear on Thursday and Bill Clinton on Friday. The location for the testimony was negotiated between Kendall and Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, in hopes of avoiding the indignity and precedent-setting move of summoning a former president to Capitol Hill for questioning.
âNo one is accusing the Clintons of any wrongdoing,â Comer said. âWe just have a lot of questions.â
To prepare, the Clintons have been hunkering down â at times together, at times separately â to refresh their memories about the Epstein years, but even more to defend themselves and plan lines of attack against potentially hostile questioners. Republicans have sought to make the Clintons a package deal, but their separate depositions underscore the potentially vast differences between any information the two could offer to the committee.
Bill Clinton traveled on Epsteinâs private plane at least 16 times, according to a CNN review, and was pictured with women in a jacuzzi in files released by the US Department of Justice. He was also pictured with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epsteinâs former girlfriend and accomplice in trafficking victims. Hillary Clinton has said she never met Epstein.
Bill Clinton has never been accused by law enforcement of any wrongdoing related to Epstein, and a spokesperson has repeatedly said he cut ties before Epsteinâs arrest on federal charges in 2019 and was unaware of any crimes.
The former president and his lawyers are heading into their session on Friday with the expectation that he could be in for a long day of questioning, according to a source familiar with the process, possibly even longer than the five hours that Epstein associate Les Wexner sat for last week. The depositions will be videotaped and Republican committee staff are aiming to release the video in a matter of days after the interviews are completed, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.
The Clintons and members of the House Oversight Committee have agreed to five topic areas for the depositions, a person familiar with the agreement told CNN. They are:
Epstein survivors and lawyers representing them told CNN that they believe it is important for the Clintons â the former president, in particular â to testify. In interviews, they stressed that the presence of an individual in the Epstein files and their cooperation with Congress does not indicate wrongdoing.
Still, Bill Clinton should share anything he knows about Epsteinâs past with lawmakers, several survivors and lawyers said.
