Members of the Republican-led Home Oversight Committee are scheduled to query former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday as a part of their investigation into the late intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The closed-door interview, which shall be videotaped, is about to happen in Chappaqua, New York, the place the Clintons have a home. The committee will meet with former President Invoice Clinton the subsequent day for the same deposition.
The in-person interviews come after months of bitter back-and-forth between the previous first couple and the committee, which at one level threatened to carry the Clintons in contempt of Congress for failing to adjust to a subpoena it issued in August.
The committee initially scheduled their depositions for October. Committee chair James Comer, R-Ky., has accused them of getting given the panel the runaround since then.
The Clintons had volunteered to testify at a public listening to, however Comer stated the committee’s observe is to conduct closed-door interviews with witnesses earlier than it holds hearings.
The Clintons have repeatedly denied wrongdoing associated to Epstein and haven’t been accused of any crimes in reference to him.
Democrats within the Home of Consultant launched 19 photographs, together with images of Jeffrey Epstein with presidents Trump and Clinton, Ghislaine Maxwell, billionaire Invoice Gates, movie director Woody Allen and conservative firebrand Steve Bannon. NBC New York’s Jonathan Dienst reviews.
Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee who misplaced the presidential election to Donald Trump in 2016, has stated they’ve little data to supply the panel about Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 as he was awaiting trial on federal intercourse trafficking prices. She has accused the committee of utilizing her and her husband to attempt to distract from Trump’s ties to Epstein.
“Different witnesses have been requested to testify. They gave written statements beneath oath. We provided that,” she advised the BBC in an interview final week. “Why do they need to pull us into this? To divert consideration from President Trump. This isn’t difficult.”
Undated pictures of Invoice Clinton with Epstein and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell have been launched in December within the first tranche of paperwork made public beneath the Epstein Recordsdata Transparency Act, a 2025 legislation that requires the Justice Division to make public its investigative information regarding Epstein and Maxwell.
It’s unclear the place the images have been taken. Clinton’s spokesperson, Angel Ureña, has stated he traveled on Epstein’s airplane 4 occasions in 2002 and 2003 on journeys for his Clinton Basis.
It is unclear whether or not Hillary Clinton, who didn’t go on these journeys, ever met Epstein, who pleaded responsible in Florida to a state cost of soliciting a minor in 2008 and was sentenced to 18 months in jail. Clinton advised the BBC this month that she doesn’t imagine she met him.
Hillary Clinton did, nonetheless, know Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 of federal intercourse trafficking prices, together with conspiracy to entice minors to journey to interact in unlawful intercourse acts. She is serving a 20-year jail sentence.
In an uncommon interview with Deputy Lawyer Normal Todd Blanche final yr, Maxwell stated that “President Clinton was my good friend, not Epstein’s good friend,” and that she was the one who requested Epstein to let Clinton and different basis members and company use his airplane in 2002.
It is unclear when Maxwell first met the previous president. She stated she was launched to him by a mutual good friend after he left workplace in 2001. She stated she met Hillary Clinton in some unspecified time in the future in both Nantucket or Martha’s Winery in Massachusetts, and “I went to the home in Chappaqua just a few occasions.”
Maxwell didn’t say when these journeys have been. She advised Blanche that Invoice Clinton was “very shut” pals with billionaire Ted Waitt, whom she stated she dated from 2003 to 2010.
Maxwell and Waitt each attended Chelsea Clinton’s wedding ceremony in 2010. Maxwell was additionally noticed at a 2013 Clinton International Initiative annual assembly in New York Metropolis, years after she had been publicly accused in a civil swimsuit of serving to Epstein groom and sexually abuse minors.
It is unclear when she final noticed or communicated with Hillary Clinton.
Political commentator Sue O’Connell reacts to former President Invoice Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ignoring subpoenas to testify earlier than the Home Oversight Committee.
In her BBC interview, the previous secretary of state stated that she’d met Maxwell on “just a few events” and that “1000’s of individuals go to the Clinton International Initiative.”
In her interview with Blanche, Maxwell was requested when she had final gone on a visit with or seen Invoice Clinton.
“It was in — was late 2000 and, I don’t know, ’16, ’17, ’18, one thing in — it was in Los Angeles,” she stated. “I feel he was internet hosting one thing or he was at an occasion and I used to be in L.A. and I had dinner with him.”
In a sworn declaration despatched to the Oversight Committee final month and obtained by NBC Information, Invoice Clinton stated, “I’ve no recollection of after I first met Ms. Maxwell, although I imagine she was working for Mr. Epstein on the time.” He added that she “later started a private relationship with a mutual good friend.”
“I’ve no recollection of precisely after I final noticed her, but it surely was a few years in the past,” Clinton stated within the declaration, which was first reported by The New York Occasions.
A separate declaration from Hillary Clinton used the identical language about Maxwell, and each Clintons stated that they had “no private information” of both Epstein’s or Maxwell’s “felony actions.”
Maxwell advised Blanche that she by no means noticed Invoice Clinton or Trump doing something inappropriate.
After her interview with Blanche, a former Trump lawyer, she was transferred from a jail in Florida to a decrease, minimum-security jail camp in Texas.
