FEBRUARY 4, 2026
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House, Tuesday, February 3, 2026, in Washington, D.C.
President Donald Trump has reacted to news that Bill and Hillary Clinton will be testifying later this month in a House investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. It comes after a House Representative advanced criminal contempt of Congress charges against them both.
When asked for his reaction to the update in a press conference on Tuesday, the president said: “I think it’s a shame, to be honest. I always liked him. Her, she’s a very capable woman. She was better at debating than some of the other people, I will tell you that. She was smarter. Smart woman.”
He added: “I hate to see it, but then I look at me, they went after me like they wanted me to go to jail for the rest of my life. Then it turned out I was innocent. Very innocent.”
Kentucky Representative James Comer, the Republican chair of the committee, advanced the charges against both Clintons for defying congressional subpoenas issued in August.
“We look forward to now questioning the Clintons as part of our investigation into the horrific crimes of Epstein and Maxwell, to deliver transparency and accountability for the American people and for survivors,” Comer said in a statement Tuesday.
This comes after a Republican-led committee approved the contempt resolution against the former president by 34-8, and his wife, by 28-15, on Wednesday.
Why It Matters
As more and more documents relating to Epstein (a convicted sex offender who died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting sex trafficking charges) are released, scrutiny against a wide array of political and business figures has been escalating, and there have been bipartisan calls for more transparency over investigations.
If the contempt resolution goes forward, it would be a historical moment to see a former president and former presidential candidate sent to jail. It would also underscore the far-reaching consequences of the Epstein investigation and how the case can seep into unexpected areas of U.S. politics.
Comer insisted in the letter that the former president and his wife must sit for sworn depositions to fulfill the subpoenas, and it has been agreed that they will have the closed-door depositions transcribed and recorded on video.
Like a number of other political figures including Trump, Bill Clinton had a well-documented relationship with Epstein in the late 1990s and early 2000s, although neither he nor Trump have been credibly accused of wrongdoing in their interactions with Epstein.
When Will The Clintons Testify Before Congress?
Under an agreement finalized between the Clintons and House Republicans announced this week, Hillary Clinton is scheduled to testify before the Oversight Committee on February 26, followed by Bill Clinton on February 27, marking the first time that lawmakers have compelled a former president to testify.
The Clinton’s Statement
Before the agreement was finalized, the Clinton’s released a joint statement about their dispute with Comer and the House Oversight Committee in regard to the Epstein investigation. The Clintons’ letter was addressed to Comer, shared on X last month, and dated January 13.
The letter read:
Chairman Comer,
We want to take a moment, given everything, to address you directly.
This past year has seen our Government engage in unprecedented acts, including against our own citizens. People have been seized by masked federal agents from their homes, their workplaces, and the streets of their communities. Students and scientists with visas permitting them to study and work here have been deported without due process. The people who laid siege to the U.S. Capitol have been pardoned and called heroes. Agencies vital to the country’s national security have been dismantled. Universities, media companies, and law firms have been subjected to threats to their funding, access, and licensing unless they made concessions and surrendered their right to constitutionally protected free speech. American troops have been deployed on the streets of our towns and cities. The Justice Department has been used as a weapon, at the direction of the President, to pursue political opponents. And most recently and searingly, an ICE agent killed an unarmed mother only days ago.
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.
We are lucky by virtue of the positions we held, and the protections afforded by them. But we are not blind. Every day we see the country we have dedicated our lives to improving take step after step after step backwards.
As chairman of this powerful congressional committee, you have immense power to target anyone and subject them to closed door interrogation and more. The decisions you have made, and the priorities you have set as chairman regarding the Epstein investigation, have prevented progress in discovering the facts about the government’s role.
The facts speak for themselves: You subpoenaed eight people in addition to us. You dismissed seven of those eight without any of them saying a single word to you. You made no attempt to force them to appear. In fact, since you started your investigation last year, you have interviewed a total of two people. Two.
A legal analysis prepared by two law firms and provided to you yesterday makes clear your subpoenas are legally invalid. You claim your subpoenas are inviolate when they are used against us yet were silent when the sitting President took the same position, as a former president, barely more than three years ago. We call on you to release that analysis to the public to allow them to see how this is yet another example of the casual disregard of the law of the land. All the while, you have done nothing with your oversight capacity to force the Department of Justice to follow the law and release all its Epstein files, including any material regarding us as we have publicly called for.
Over the last year in the House, extending health care for Americans in any state succeeded only because enough Republicans joined with Democrats. The fact that the public and we are seeing any of the Department of Justice’s Epstein files is only because four Republicans, out of 220, joined every Democrat to reach the minimum number of Members to force a vote. You were not one of those four. Even now, despite the Department of Justice’s failure to follow the law the Congress passed, you have chosen not to consider subpoenaing the sitting Attorney General to follow the law.
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. This is not the way out of America’s ills, and we will forcefully defend ourselves.
Indeed, bringing the Republicans’ cruel agenda to a standstill while you work harder to pass a contempt charge against us than you have done on your investigation this past year would be our contribution to fighting the madness.
We have tried to give you the little information we have. We’ve done so because Mr. Epstein’s crimes were horrific. If the Government didn’t do all it could to investigate and prosecute these crimes, for whatever reason, that should be the focus of your work—to learn why and to prevent that from happening ever again. There is no evidence that you are doing so. Instead, you have forced the victims to relive their painful experiences, while doing little to give them and everybody else what’s deserved: truth and justice. There is no plausible explanation for what you are doing other than partisan politics.
You accepted the least from those who know the most but demand the most from those who know the least. To say you can’t complete your work without speaking to us is simply bizarre.
You have asked what we know. To answer your inquiry, we are providing you with the same or more than seven of the other eight individuals you subpoenaed regarding the handling of the Epstein investigations and prosecutions, which may be why you have not publicly released their written statements.
We expect you will say it is not enough. We expect you’ll reject it. You may even set out an empty chair or stand in front of the cameras and outright dismiss what we have provided. We expect you will direct your committee to seek to hold us in contempt. You may even release irrelevant, decades-old photos that you hope will embarrass us. You will say your caucus, and the Speaker and the President are behind you 100 percent. We hope, perhaps in vain, that they will not allow you to singlehandedly hijack the Congress by unilaterally making this decision for your colleagues, your party, and our country.
You will say it is not our decision to make. But we have made it. Now you have to make yours.
We are prepared to make our case to your 45 committee members, and if need be, more. Importantly, we also will defend ourselves in the public arena and ensure this country knows exactly what you are doing and why you are doing so, instead of helping the American people who need this Congress’s work and protection.
For most people, maybe even the bulk of the Congress, today will be the first they learn of this dispute. We are confident that any reasonable person in or out of Congress will see, based on everything we release, that what you are doing is trying to punish those who you see as your enemies and to protect those you think are your friends.
Continue to mislead Americans about what is truly at stake, and you will learn that Americans are better at finding the truth than you are at burying it.
Continue to pursue autopens instead of penning laws Americans need, and you will learn that you are signing away any remaining chance of being on the right side of history.
Continue to abet the dismantling of America, and you will learn that it takes more than a wrecking ball to demolish what Americans have built over 250 years.
Sincerely,
Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton.
Courtesy/Source: Newsweek
