Former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is set to testify Thursday to the House Oversight Committee about the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, while her husband, former President Bill Clinton, is scheduled to be questioned by lawmakers on Friday.
The Republican-led committee is traveling to the sleepy hamlet of Chappaqua to question the Clintons behind closed doors in their New York hometown after images of Bill Clinton were included in a tranche of documents dropped by the Justice Department, which released the files to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
The Clintons, who have not been accused of any crimes in connection with Epstein and denied wrongdoing, have been locked in a tense back-and-forth with the committee for months.
They had previously resisted subpoenas to compel their testimony, labeling efforts from the GOP-controlled House Oversight Committee “invalid and legally unenforceable” in a searing letter that also condemned Donald Trump’s administration and the alleged failures of a Republican-dominated Congress to hold it accountable.
But, with the threat of a House vote to hold them in contempt of Congress, the couple agreed to be questioned behind closed doors.
They were reported to be “hunkering down” ahead of the grilling this week.
Republican Rep. James Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee, said the panel would “press for the answers” in the depositions.
“Bill and Hillary Clinton have never answered a single question about their well-documented ties to Jeffrey Epstein & Ghislaine Maxwell,” Comer said Thursday in a post on X. “That ends today. The House Oversight Committee will press for the answers survivors and the American people deserve.”
Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee defeated by Trump, said she never met Epstein but did encounter Maxwell “on a few occasions.”
In an interview with the BBC last week, Hillary Clinton claimed this week that the depositions were an attempt to “divert attention” from Trump.
“Other witnesses were asked to testify,” she said. “They gave written statements under oath. We offered that. Why do they want to pull us into this? To divert attention from President Trump. This is not complicated.”
“We have nothing to hide,” she added. “We have called for the full release of these [Epstein] files repeatedly. We think sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
The depositions with the former president and former secretary of state will be filmed, and Republicans are hoping to release footage of the interviews in the following days, according to CNN.
Members of the panel questioning the Clintons this week plan to speak to reporters at the end of each session, Politico reports.
Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the committee, told the outlet that “both Republicans and Democrats” are “glad” the deposition is happening.
The Clintons and members of the committee have agreed to several talking points for the depositions, which include the alleged mismanagement of the federal investigation into Epstein and Maxwell, the sex offender’s 2019 death by suicide and how Epstein and Maxwell sought to curry favor to protect themselves, a person familiar with the matter told CNN.
In December 2025, photos of Bill Clinton with Epstein were included in the first document dump by the Justice Department, which the White House and Trump’s allies immediately pounced upon.
Following the release of the photographs, the couple published a blistering eight-page letter to the committee, and said they anticipated that House Republicans would continue to “release irrelevant, decades-old photos that you hope will embarrass us.”
Days after Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges in 2019, Bill Clinton’s spokesperson Angel Ureña admitted the former president traveled on Epstein’s private plane, but said he “knows nothing about the terrible crimes” the disgraced financier had either pleaded guilty to or was accused of.
The trips Clinton took in 2002 and 2003 “included stops in connection with the work of” his nonprofit, the Clinton Foundation, Ureña said.
Rachel Dobkin contributed to this report
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