Former President Bill Clinton will sit for a closed-door deposition on Friday before members of the House Oversight Committee, answering questions about his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. The session, taking place in Chappaqua, New York, makes Clinton the first sitting or former president to testify before members of Congress in over 40 years.
Committee chair James Comer expects the deposition to run "even longer" than the previous day's six-hour session, which featured the other Clinton.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was questioned under oath on the same topic Thursday. She told the committee she has no memories of Epstein or anything connected to him.
I had no idea about their criminal activities. I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein. I never flew on his plane or visited his island home or offices.
She also posted her opening statement on X and called for the full release of the Epstein files.
There is only one prior case of a sitting or former president appearing before members of Congress. Gerald R. Ford testified before a Senate subcommittee in 1983 about planning for the bicentennial of the Constitution. That was a civic formality. This is something else entirely.
The 79-year-old former president will face questions not about constitutional celebrations but about his relationship with a man whose network of abuse spanned years, continents, and some of the most powerful circles in the world, Breitbart reported. The gravity of the setting matches the gravity of the subject.
Hillary Clinton's Thursday testimony is worth examining on its own terms. Six hours under oath, and the central theme was absence. No memories of Epstein. No recollection of encountering him. Never on his plane. Never on his island. Never in his offices.
For a couple who spent decades at the highest levels of political and social life, whose orbits overlapped with virtually every major power broker in the Western world, the total absence of any memory related to Jeffrey Epstein is a remarkable claim. It may be true. But it asks a great deal of the listener.
The call for full release of the Epstein files is a savvy move. It positions Hillary Clinton as someone with nothing to hide while costing her nothing, since the release is not in her hands. It's the kind of gesture that looks like transparency without actually producing any.
Bill Clinton's deposition carries higher stakes. His connections to Epstein have been documented and discussed for years in ways that his wife's have not. Comer's expectation that the session will run longer than six hours suggests the committee has substantial ground to cover.
Behind closed doors, without cameras, the dynamics change. There are no viral moments to play for, no soundbites to craft in real time. There is only the questioner, the witness, and the record. That is exactly how depositions of this magnitude should work. The public interest is served not by spectacle but by thoroughness.
The Epstein case has always been about more than one man. It has been about the institutions and individuals that surrounded him, enabled him, or simply looked away because looking closely would have been inconvenient. The victims of Epstein and Maxwell deserve an accounting that goes beyond a single conviction and a single prison sentence that ended in a conveniently timed death.
For years, the political class treated the Epstein question as something best left undisturbed. Both parties had exposure. Both parties had incentive to let the story fade. The House Oversight Committee is now making clear that it will not fade quietly.
Neither Clinton has been accused of wrongdoing. But testimony under oath is not an accusation. It is a mechanism for establishing what powerful people knew, when they knew it, and what they did with that knowledge. The American public has waited long enough for those answers.
Friday in Chappaqua, they get one step closer.