A Republican lawmaker has vowed to launch a contempt lawsuit against former President Bill Clinton after he failed to appear Tuesday to testify before a committee investigating Jeffrey Epstein.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer told reporters he will begin a lawsuit against Clinton next week and could do the same to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton if she does not answer questions Wednesday.
The committee issued subpoenas to both Clintons to testify against the deceased sex offender.
Clinton’s lawyers said the subpoena was “unenforceable” and that they had already provided the “limited information” they had about Epstein.
Bill Clinton has never been accused of a crime by survivors of Epstein’s abuse and has denied knowledge of his sexual misconduct.
In a statement Tuesday, Comer said the subpoena to Clinton was voted on in a “bipartisan fashion.”
“We’ve been communicating with President Clinton’s legal team for months, giving them opportunity after opportunity to come in, and they kept delaying, delaying, delaying, so we had no idea whether they would show up today or not,” he said.
The Clintons argued that the subpoenas (legal orders to provide testimony) were “nothing more than a ploy to embarrass political rivals as directed by President Trump.”
In a letter to Comer, Clinton’s lawyers said they had “proactively and voluntarily” communicated with the committee and that the subpoena was “unreasonable because it is unrelated to a valid legislative purpose and does not seek relevant information, and is an unprecedented violation of the separation of powers.”
Bill Clinton appears with Epstein and the late financier’s estate in photos recently released by the U.S. Department of Justice after Congress passed a law requiring the release of materials related to the Epstein investigation.
One photo shows the former president swimming in a pool, while another shows him lying with his hands behind his head in what appears to be a hot tub.
Clinton was photographed with Epstein several times in the 1990s and early 2000s before Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges.
When the photos were released last month, Clinton spokeswoman Angel Ureña said they were decades old and that Clinton had ceased her relationship with Epstein before his crimes came to light.
The spokeswoman previously acknowledged that Bill Clinton traveled with associates on Epstein’s private plane four times in 2002 and 2003 and met with Epstein in New York in 2002. Clinton also visited Epstein’s New York apartment around that time.
U.S. media previously reported, citing flight records, that Clinton flew on Epstein’s jet more than 20 times, sometimes without his Secret Service information.
Congress has the power to detain someone until they comply with a subpoena, send a certificate of contempt to the Justice Department for prosecution, or require a court to comply with an order.
“If a court determines that a party has a legal obligation to comply, continued failure to do so may subject that party to contempt of court,” the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said.
“When the subject of a subpoena is an executive branch official, civil enforcement may be the only practical means by which Congress can effectively ensure compliance with the subpoena.”
Contempt of Parliament is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $100,000 (£74,500) and up to a year in prison.
Last year, lawmakers from both parties have been working to identify Epstein’s connections to powerful people and passed legislation requiring the Justice Department to release all files collected in federal investigations of sex offenders by mid-December.
After the department released only a portion of the files, the bill’s authors, Republican Thomas Massie and Democrat Ro Khanna, went to court last week to ask a federal judge to appoint a special master to ensure the government complies with the requirements.
