WASHINGTON — The Republican-led House Oversight Committee announced Tuesday that it will seek to hold former President Bill Clinton in contempt of Congress after he failed to appear for a deposition as part of the panel's probe into the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
House Oversight Chair James Comer, R-Ky., said that because Clinton decided not to show up “for his lawful subpoena,” the panel would vote on holding him in contempt next week.
“We’ve communicated with President Clinton’s legal team for months now, giving them opportunity after opportunity, to come in, to give us a day, and they continue to delay, delay, delay to the point where we had no idea whether they’re going to show up today or not," Comer said. "I think it’s very disappointing.”
The committee had scheduled a deposition with Clinton for Tuesday morning, as well as a deposition with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for Wednesday, as a result of subpoenas issued last year.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters Monday night that it “would be contempt of Congress” if the Clintons did not attend this week’s depositions.
In a letter to Comer, the Clintons said they didn't plan to appear for the scheduled depositions, arguing that the subpoenas are “legally invalid” and citing legal analysis prepared by two law firms that they said were provided to the committee Monday.
“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,” the Clintons wrote. “For us, now is that time.”
They also addressed the prospect of the committee voting to hold them in contempt.
“We expect you will direct your committee to seek to hold us in contempt,” the Clintons wrote, adding, “You will say it is not our decision to make. But we have made it. Now you have to make yours.”
"Despite everything that needs to be done to help our country, you are on the cusp of bringing Congress to a halt to pursue a rarely used process literally designed to result in our imprisonment," they wrote. "This is not the way out of America's ills, and we will forcefully defend ourselves."
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., an Oversight Committee member who led a bipartisan push to force a floor vote on the release of the Epstein files last year, told NBC News that Clinton should appear for testimony.
"I have always said that this needs to be transparent," Khanna said Tuesday. "Everyone involved should be providing an explanation, and I have conducted this in a way that doesn’t single out Republicans or Democrats."
"If Democrats are implicated, then so be it," he added.
Other House Democrats who spoke with NBC News, like Rep. Dan Goldman of New York, did not go as far.
Goldman called Comer's subpoena of the former president "absolutely absurd."
"This is a distraction," he said.
Comer subpoenaed the Clintons to appear for depositions for testimony related to the former president's relationship with Epstein. The committee originally scheduled the couple's depositions for last October.
"No one’s accused of Bill Clinton of any wrongdoing," Comer said in his remarks Tuesday morning. "We just have questions."
In December, Comer said he would postpone the depositions for a second time because the Clintons needed to attend a funeral, but he said the Clintons' lawyer, David Kendall, was “unwilling to provide any alternative dates" for their testimony, so he was setting the depositions for mid-January.
