Bill and Hillary Clinton have said they will testify before the House Oversight Committee as part of its investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Their decision reverses their long-standing refusal just days before lawmakers were set to vote on holding them in criminal contempt of Congress.
The former president and former secretary of state had spent months rejecting subpoenas issued by Representative James Comer of Kentucky, the committee’s Republican chairman.
The Clintons had argued that his demands were not legally valid and accused him of using the investigation as a political weapon at the direction of President Trump.
Their position shifted after several Democrats on the committee joined Republicans in supporting a recommendation to refer the Clintons to the Justice Department for possible prosecution.
It marks a rare and dramatic escalation that would have been an unprecedented move against a former first couple.
Following that vote, lawyers for the Clintons contacted Comer on Monday evening to confirm that both would sit for depositions at dates to be agreed upon, and urged the committee to abandon its plans to proceed with the contempt vote scheduled for later this week.
‘They negotiated in good faith. You did not,’ spokesmen for the Clintons said in a statement. ‘They told under oath what they know, but you did not care. But the former president and former secretary of state will be there.’
Bill and Hillary Clinton have said they will testify before the House Oversight Committee as part of its investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein
Bill Clinton is pictured lining up to eat cake
A new trove of about 3million files related to the financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was released on Friday
The Clintons’ decision followed a prolonged standoff with Representative James Comer, and represented a significant political win for the Republican chairman.
The move also advanced Comer’s broader strategy of redirecting his committee’s Epstein investigation away from scrutiny of Trump’s past connections to the financier and toward high-profile Democrats who had social or professional ties to Epstein and his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell.
In a letter sent to Comer over the weekend and obtained by The New York Times, attorneys for Clinton made a final attempt to shape the terms of any testimony.
They proposed that the former president participate in a four-hour recorded interview with the full committee – a format Clinton had previously criticized as excessive and without modern precedent.
Comer rejected the Clinton’s offer, calling it ‘unreasonable’ arguing that four hours of testimony from Mr. Clinton was inadequate given that he was a ‘loquacious individual’ and would look to run out the clock.
The lawyers also requested that Hillary Clinton be allowed to submit a sworn written statement instead of appearing in person, citing her claim that she never met or communicated with Epstein.
‘Your clients’ desire for special treatment is both frustrating and an affront to the American people’s desire for transparency,’ Comer wrote in a letter to the Clintons’ lawyers on Monday in a letter that was seen by the Times.
However, they added that she would still agree to an in-person interview if required, noting that any such session should reflect the limited relevance of her knowledge to the investigation.
Former President Bill Clinton is seen alongside Jeffrey Epstein wearing silk shirts
Epstein and Maxwell are seen speaking with then-President Bill Clinton at an event that took place in 1993 for donors to the White House Historical Association
According to The New York Times, Bill Clinton’s agreement to testify in the Epstein inquiry would place him in extremely rare territory.
The last time a former president appeared before Congress was in 1983, when Gerald R. Ford testified about preparations for the 1987 celebration marking 200 years since the Constitution’s ratification.
By contrast, when Donald Trump was subpoenaed in 2022 by the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol, he responded by filing a lawsuit to block the demand, and the panel later dropped the subpoena.
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