Former US President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of State, have agreed to testify in the congressional investigation into late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Bill Clinton’s deputy chief of staff confirmed the news on social media, writing: “The former President and former Secretary of State will be there.”
It comes as the Republican-led US House of Representatives was preparing to vote on holding both Clintons in criminal contempt for defying legal summonses.
Bill Clinton’s photo appears in Epstein files released by the Department of Justice, although the former Democratic president has denied any wrongdoing.
It will be the first time a former US president has testified to a congressional committee since Gerald Ford did so in 1983.
The House Oversight Committee, led by Republicans, approved the measure to hold the Clintons in contempt late last month, with the support of several Democrats.
In a statement at the time, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said “no-one is above the law”.
Lawyers for the Clintons had called the subpoenas “unenforceable”, and said they had already provided the “limited information” they had on Epstein.
The Clintons had dismissed the legal summonses as “nothing more than a ploy to attempt to embarrass political rivals, as President Trump has directed”.
On Monday evening, Clinton spokesman Angel Ureña posted on X confirming the couple would appear before the panel.
“They negotiated in good faith,” Ureña wrote in a tweet directed at the House Oversight Committee. “You did not.
“They told you under oath what they know, but you don’t care.”
He added: “They look forward to setting a precedent that applies to everyone.”
Bill Clinton has never been accused of wrongdoing by survivors of Epstein’s abuse, and has denied knowledge of his sex offending.
Bill Clinton appears with Epstein and at the late financier’s estate in photographs that were released by the justice department after Congress passed a law requiring the agency to release material related to investigations of Epstein.
One picture shows the former president swimming in a pool, and another shows him lying on his back with his hands behind his head in what appears to be a hot tub.
Ureña, Clinton’s spokesman, said when the photos were released that they were decades old and Clinton had stopped associating with Epstein before his crimes came to light.
The House Oversight Committee chairman previously noted the subpoenas to the Clintons were approved in a bipartisan manner.
“We 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,” said Comer, a Kentucky Republican.
The Clintons wrote a letter to Comer last month criticising his handling of the Epstein investigation.
“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 letter said.
They added: “There is no plausible explanation for what you are doing other than partisan politics.”
By BBC News
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