Former President Bill Clinton told members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that it’s “for you to decide” whether to call up the current president, Donald Trump, to testify in the panel’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation, chair James Comer told reporters Friday.
“[He] went on to say that, ‘President Trump has never said anything to me to make me think he was involved and he met with Epstein,’” Comer, a Kentucky Republican, recalled Bill Clinton telling the committee during his deposition.
“I know there’s a lot of curiosity about President Trump,” Comer continued. “I thought that was an interesting thing that President Clinton said.”
But Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said in a subsequent news conference during a break in the deposition proceedings that Comer’s remarks were not an “accurate description” of Bill Clinton’s testimony.
Garcia declined to share more details, accusing Republicans of breaking the rules with their disclosures about what was being discussed inside the room. But he reiterated that Trump should be subpoenaed in the panel’s Epstein probe.
Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) said that he now, in fact, had “new questions” about Trump’s alleged falling out with Epstein. Trump has said the two men fell out years before Epstein’s 2019 arrest and that he had no part in Epstein’s criminal activities. Trump also has not been charged with any crimes.
Bill Clinton has maintained he was an acquaintance of Epstein’s but stopped communicating with him at least a decade before the late financier’s arrest in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, during her testimony before the committee Thursday, denied ever meeting Epstein and said she had no knowledge of his or Maxwell’s crimes.
Neither of the Clintons have been accused of wrongdoing.
