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US House panel subpoenas Clintons over Epstein as pressure builds on Trump administration
Bill and Hillary Clinton have been subpoenaed in the Jeffrey Epstein case. Reuters
The US House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed Bill and Hillary Clinton to record their testimony on sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, letters posted on its website on Tuesday (August 5) showed.
The former president and former secretary of state are two of the many former Democratic and Republican government officials that were probed by investigators in a major escalation of the controversy surrounding the inquiry into Epstein, who reportedly died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking.
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The subpoenas come at a time the White House has been encountering rising pressure to be more transparent about the Epstein files— documents known to contain names of high-profile individuals related to the disgraced financier's crimes.
Pivots by the Justice Department department, such as saying that Epstein had no secret client list, and confirming that he had died by suicide and that his case was effectively closed, angered many people, including Trump supporters who believe Epstein was murdered in a cover-up.
Trump has urged his supporters to drop demands for the Epstein files, but Democrats in the Republican-led Congress, with some support from majority lawmakers, have also been seeking a floor vote to force their release.
'By your own admission, you flew on Jeffrey Epstein's private plane four separate times in 2002 and 2003,' Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer wrote to former president Clinton.
'During one of these trips, you were even pictured receiving a 'massage' from one of Mr. Epstein's victims.
The White House has been seeking to redirect public attention from Epstein, who was a financier and friend to numerous high-profile people, including Trump.
His 2019 prison cell death supercharged a conspiracy theory long promoted by many Trump supporters that Epstein had run an international pedophile ring and that elites wanted to make sure he never revealed their secrets.
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After Trump returned to power in January, his administration promised to release Epstein case files.
However, a report by Wall Street Journal reported that Pam Bondi had informed Trump in May that his name appeared several times in the Epstein files. This, against the backdrop of sudden reversal of claims about the Epstein files' existence, have solidified discourse around Trump's involvement in sex crimes.
With inputs from AFP
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