By Thérèse Boudreaux
The Center Square

A powerful House committee is threatening to hold former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress if the two continue trying to avoid their Jeffrey Epstein-related depositions.

As part of an ongoing investigation, the House Oversight Committee had issued subpoenas in August to the Clintons and other high-profile Democrats with connections to child sex trafficker Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

The Clintons have argued that in-person depositions are unnecessary, with their lawyer telling the committee that the couple has “little to contribute…all of which can be readily submitted on paper.”

Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., disagreed, replying Friday that “[t]he Committee is not obligated to defer to either your or your clients’ determination regarding the importance or quantity of the information they possess; and it declines to do so.”

“Rather, the Committee is entitled to a fulsome examination of this information, which should include the ability to elicit the information in person and to ask relevant follow-up questions,” Comer said.

In a separate comment, he added that “[g]iven their history with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, any attempt by the Clintons to avoid sitting for a deposition would be in defiance of lawful subpoenas and grounds to initiate contempt of Congress proceedings.”

Bill Clinton is scheduled for an in-person deposition Dec. 17, while Hillary Clinton’s is scheduled for Dec. 18.

In the committee’s original subpoenas, it noted that the former president had flown on Epstein’s private plane four separate times in 2002 and 2003 – on one flight pictured receiving a massage from one of Epstein’s victims. He also attended a dinner with Maxwell – whom he allegedly was close with – in 2014, three years after reports surfaced of her involvement in Epstein’s child abuse activities, according to the subpoenas.

The committee subpoenaed Hillary Clinton in part due to her hiring Maxwell’s nephew to work for her 2008 presidential campaign and later hiring him to work in her department when she served as secretary of State.

Epstein died in his jail cell awaiting trial in 2019, while his associate Ghislaine Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence that she recently appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Interest in Epstein’s crimes resurfaced after U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said his alleged client list was “sitting on [her] desk,” only for the Trump administration to backtrack and claim that no such list existed.

The president has also received scrutiny from the public over his ties to Epstein, particularly after the Wall Street Journal published a birthday letter allegedly sent from Trump to the disgraced financier on his 50th birthday.

Trump denies that the note is from him and maintains that he and Epstein had a falling out years ago.