testify

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.

United States lawmakers have written to Andrew, Britain’s disgraced former prince, requesting that he sit for a formal interview about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a day after King Charles III formally stripped his younger brother of his royal titles.

Separately, a secluded desert ranch where Epstein once entertained guests is coming under renewed scrutiny in the US state of New Mexico, with two state legislators proposing a “truth commission” to uncover the full extent of the financier’s crimes there.

On Thursday, 16 Democratic Party members of Congress signed a letter addressed to “Mr Mountbatten Windsor”, as Andrew is now known, to participate in a “transcribed interview” with the US House of Representatives oversight committee’s investigation into Epstein.

“The committee is seeking to uncover the identities of Mr Epstein’s co-conspirators and enablers and to understand the full extent of his criminal operations,” the letter read.

“Well-documented allegations against you, along with your longstanding friendship with Mr Epstein, indicate that you may possess knowledge of his activities relevant to our investigation,” it added.

The letter asked Andrew to respond by November 20.

The US Congress has no power to compel testimony from foreigners, making it unlikely Andrew will give evidence.

The letter will be another unwelcome development for the disgraced former prince after a turbulent few weeks.

On October 30, Buckingham Palace said King Charles had “initiated a formal process” to revoke Andrew’s royal status after weeks of pressure to act over his relationship with Epstein – who took his own life in prison in 2019 while facing sex trafficking charges.

The rare move to strip a British prince or princess of their title – last taken in 1919 after Prince Ernest Augustus sided with Germany during World War I – also meant that Andrew was evicted from his lavish Royal Lodge mansion in Windsor and moved into “private accommodation”.

King Charles formally made the changes with an announcement published on Wednesday in The Gazette – the United Kingdom’s official public record – saying Andrew “shall no longer be entitled to hold and enjoy the style, title or attribute of ‘Royal Highness’ and the titular dignity of ‘Prince’”.

Andrew surrendered his use of the title Duke of York earlier in October following new abuse allegations from his accuser, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, in her posthumous memoir, which hit shelves last month.

The Democrat lawmakers referenced Giuffre’s memoir in their letter, specifically claims that she feared “retaliation if she made allegations against” Andrew, and that he had asked his personal protection officer to “dig up dirt” on his accuser for a smear campaign in 2011.

“This fear of retaliation has been a persistent obstacle to many of those who were victimised in their fight for justice,” the letter said. “In addition to Mr. Epstein’s crimes, we are investigating any such efforts to silence, intimidate, or threaten victims.”

Giuffre, who alleges that Epstein trafficked her to have sex with Andrew on three occasions, twice when she was just 17, took her own life in Australia in April.

In 2022, Andrew paid Giuffre a multimillion-pound settlement to resolve a civil lawsuit she had levelled against him. Andrew denied the allegations, and he has not been charged with any crime.

On Thursday, Democratic lawmakers also turned the spotlight on Zorro Ranch, proposing to the House of Representatives’ Courts, Corrections and Justice Interim Committee that a commission be created to investigate alleged crimes against young girls at the New Mexico property, which Epstein purchased in 1993.

State Representative Andrea Romero said several survivors of Epstein’s abuse have signalled that sex trafficking activity extended to the secluded desert ranch with a hilltop mansion and private runway in Stanley, about 56 kilometres (35 miles) south of the state capital, Santa Fe.

“This commission will specifically seek the truth about what officials knew, how crimes were unreported or reported, and how the state can ensure that this essentially never happens again,” Romero told a panel of legislators.

“There’s no complete record of what occurred,” she said.

Representative Marianna Anaya, presenting to the committee alongside Romero, said state authorities missed several opportunities over decades to stop Epstein.

“Even after all these years, you know, there are still questions of New Mexico’s role as a state, our roles in terms of oversight and accountability for the survivors who are harmed,” she said.

New Mexico laws allowed Epstein to avoid registering locally as a sex offender long after he was required to register in Florida, where he was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution in 2008.

Republican Representative Andrea Reeb said she believed New Mexicans “have a right to know what happened at this ranch” and she didn’t feel the commission was going to be a “big political thing”.

To move forward, approval will be needed from the state House when the legislature convenes in January.