Clintons refuse to testify in House Epstein investigation

Congressional Republicans are threatening to hold Bill and Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress after the Democratic former president and presidential candidate refused to testify in a GOP-led House probe into Jeffrey Epstein.

- ALEX WOODWARD IN NEW YORK

A blistering letter from the Clintons to House oversight committee chair James Comer states that “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”.

“For us, now is that time,” they wrote.

Comer told reporters yesterday that the committee intends to hold them in contempt of Congress next week.

As chair of the powerful Republican-led committee, Mr Comer has steered focus from an investigation into the sex offender and his alleged connections to a wider trafficking conspiracy implicating powerful figures, including President Donald Trump, and instead drawn attention to prominent Democratic figures who had previously associated with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Asked whether he intends to subpoena Mr Trump, Mr Comer said the president has already “answered thousands of questions about Jeffrey Epstein”.

“You all ask him questions every day,” he said. “You can't bring in a current president.”

Mr Comer had set a deadline for the former president to appear before the committee by yesterday, with the former secretary of state and Mr Trump’s onetime Democratic opponent set to appear today.

But in yesterday’s damning letter to the committee, the Clintons condemned the subpoenas as “invalid and legally unenforceable” and laid out a searing indictment of the Trump administration and the alleged failures of a GOP-dominated Congress to hold it accountable - all in an effort to see them imprisoned.