Nov. 21 (UPI) — House Republicans have called on former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to testify before a committee investigating Jeffrey Epstein.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., issued congressional subpoenas seeking Bill Clinton’s testimony Dec. 17 and Hillary Clinton a day later as the committee investigates the Epstein case, USA Today reported.
“The committee looks forward to confirming their appearance and remains committed to delivering transparency and accountability for survivors of Epstein’s heinous crimes and for the American people,” Comer said in a statement.
Comer on Aug. 5 sought the Clintons’ testimonies regarding their relationship with former financier and convicted sex offender Epstein, but their attorney asked Nov. 3 that they be allowed to submit a “written proffer of what little information” they have to share, according to the New York Post.
Comer accused the Clintons of demanding the House committee scrap any plans for them to appear before it when responding to the attorney’s request.
The committee chairman also said the attorney admitted the Clintons have relevant information regarding the matter.
“It is precisely the fact President Clinton and Secretary Clinton each maintained relationships with Mr. Epstein and Ms. [Ghislaine]Maxwell in their personal capacities as private citizens that is of interest to the committee,” Comer told the Clintons’ attorney.
Some legal experts have suggested the Clintons could claim executive privilege to avoid testifying before the committee, but others say the relationships they maintained while in their personal capacities would not be subject to executive privilege, according to the New York Post.
Maxwell unlikely to testify
While the Clintons are scheduled to appear before the House committee next month, Politico reported Maxwell has invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination if she were brought before the committee.
“I could spend a bunch of taxpayer dollars to send staff and members down there,” Comer said. “If she’s going to plead the Fifth, I don’t know that that’s a good investment.”
Maxwell is imprisoned for 20 years after being convicted on child-sex-trafficking charges in 2022.
Comer subpoenaed her testimony in July, but Maxwell said she only would testify after the appeals she filed regarding her conviction were addressed.
The Supreme Court since has denied her request to reassess her conviction.
Maxwell also has sought immunity against future prosecutions in exchange for her committee testimony, which Comer said will not happen.
She did participate in a two-day deposition with the Justice Department in July and afterward was transferred from a Florida prison to a minimum-security prison in Texas.
FBI, police protect Epstein files storage
The location where the Justice Department’s Epstein investigation files is being guarded after Mark Epstein, brother of Jeffrey, on Tuesday accused the FBI of scrubbing the files of any mention of Republicans while they are being held at its Central Records facility in Winchester, Va., Bloomberg reported.
Mark Epstein claimed a “credible source” told him the files were being doctored, and his claim was shared on social media. Several people suggested protesting the FBI’s Winchester office and possibly seizing the files.
FBI officials deemed such comments to be viable threats against the facility and the files and enhanced its security at the location. Police officers also are protecting Central Records facility officials and staff.
Summers and wife visited Epstein’s island
While the FBI is more closely guarding the Epstein investigation files, The Boston Globe reported that former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and his wife, Elisa New, flew to Epstein’s privately owned Little Saint James island in the U.S. Virgin Islands 10 days after their 2005 wedding.
The trip was part of their extended honeymoon celebration and was a brief visit, Summers’ spokesperson Steven Goldberg.
Summers and New “have repeatedly expressed their regret for having any association with Jeffrey Epstein,” Goldberg said in a statement shared with the Boston newspaper Friday.
“Mr. Summers and Ms. New spent their honeymoon in St. John and Jamaica in December 2005, which was long before Mr. Epstein was arrested for the first time,” Goldberg said.
“As part of that trip, they made a brief visit of less than a day to Mr. Epstein’s island.”
Flight log records indicate Summers and New flew aboard Epstein’s private plane when they traveled from Bedford, Mass., to Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, on Dec. 21, 2005.
They met with Maxwell and Epstein’s personal pilot, Larry Visoski, while on the island and during the same year that Florida investigators began looking into Epstein’s activities.
Despite Epstein’s subsequent arrest and guilty plea to two state charges that resulted in his designation as a sex offender and a year in jail, Summers, who also is a former Harvard University president, continued his friendly relationship with the financier.
That ended when Epstein was arrested in 2019 and later that year hung himself while jailed in New York City.
New also maintained her friendly relationship with Epstein and in 2014 thanked him for a donation that he made to support her academic research as a poetry professor at Harvard.
The financial gift from Epstein was not included in Harvard’s 2020 report regarding his activities involving the university.
New in 2018 also emailed Epstein regarding the novel Lolita, which is about an older man sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl, The Boston Globe reported.