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WASHINGTON (AP) — Conventional President Invoice Clinton and extinct Secretary of Narrate Hillary Clinton finalized an agreement with Dwelling Republicans Tuesday to testify in a Dwelling investigation into Jeffrey Epstein this month, bowing to the risk of a contempt of Congress vote in opposition to them.

Hillary Clinton will testify sooner than the Dwelling Oversight Committee on Feb. 26 and Invoice Clinton will seem on Feb. 27. It might most likely mark the first time that lawmakers grasp compelled a extinct president to testify.

The association comes after months of negotiating between the 2 sides as Republicans sought to have confidence the Clintons, both Democrats, a highlight in a Dwelling committee’s investigation into Epstein, a convicted intercourse perpetrator who killed himself in a New York jail cell in 2019, and Ghislaine Maxwell, his extinct female friend.

“We search ahead to now questioning the Clintons as share of our investigation into the horrific crimes of Epstein and Maxwell, to bring transparency and accountability for the American other people and for survivors,” Win. James Comer, the chair of the Dwelling Oversight Committee, stated in a press unlock.

For months, the Clintons resisted subpoenas from the committee, but Dwelling Republicans — with make stronger from a couple of Democrats — had evolved criminal contempt of Congress prices to a doable vote this week. It threatened the Clintons with the skill for immense fines and even jail time if they had been convicted.

Dwelling Speaker Mike Johnson stated Tuesday that any effort to protect them in contempt of Congress had been “on quit.”

Even because the Clintons bowed to the strain, the negotiating between GOP lawmakers and attorneys for the Clintons modified into marked by mistrust as they wrangled over the particulars of the deposition. They agreed to grasp the closed-door depositions transcribed and recorded on video, Comer stated.

The belligerence is at risk of simplest develop as Republicans like the chance to grill longtime political foes under oath.

Comer steered The Connected Press that Republicans, in their inquiry with the Clintons, had been “attempting to figure out how Jeffrey Epstein modified into in a position to encompass himself with all these nicely off and highly efficient other people.”

Comer, a Kentucky Republican, furthermore stated that the Clintons had expressed a necessity to have confidence the court cases public, but that he would exclaim on closed-door testimony with a later unlock of a transcript of the interviews. He added that he modified into open to conserving a later public hearing if the Clintons wished it.

Clinton, like a assortment of different high-powered men at the side of President Donald Trump, had a nicely-documented relationship with Epstein in the leisurely Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s. Neither Trump nor Clinton has been credibly accused of wrongdoing in their interactions with the leisurely financier.

Each and every Clintons grasp stated they had no info that Epstein modified into sexually abusing underage girls sooner than prosecutors introduced prices in opposition to him.

The Clintons had firstly argued the subpoenas for his or her testimony had been invalid and equipped to submit sworn declarations on their exiguous info of Epstein’s crimes. But as Comer threatened to proceed with contempt of Congress prices, they began attempting to get an off-ramp.

Each and every Clintons grasp remained highly serious of how Comer has handled the Epstein investigation and argue that he is more fascinated by bringing them in for testimony in declare of conserving the Trump administration guilty for the trend it has handled the unlock of its files on Epstein.

On the opposite hand, as Comer evolved the contempt prices out of the Dwelling Oversight Committee closing month, he found a assortment of Democrats willing to relieve. A youthful generation of more modern Democrats showed they had few connections with the Clintons, who led the Democratic Occasion for many years, and had been more alive to to show voters that they would stand for transparency in the Epstein investigation.

9 Democrats out of 21 on the Oversight panel voted to attain prices in opposition to Invoice Clinton, and three Democrats joined with Republicans to make stronger the costs in opposition to Hillary Clinton. As the vote loomed this week, Dwelling Democratic leaders furthermore made it certain they would no longer dissipate powerful political capital to rally votes in opposition to the contempt resolutions.

That left the Clintons with limited need but to agree to testify or face one in all basically the most severe punishments Congress can give.

Congress has historically confirmed deference to extinct presidents. The Clintons’ concession, nonetheless, triggered some Democrats to imply that it plan a precedent for extinct presidents to conform to congressional subpoenas.

“We search ahead to the utilization of this same precedent after we steal motivate the majority in November,” Win. Daniel Goldman, a New York Democrat, stated on social media.

Trump’s attorneys successfully resisted a congressional subpoena in 2022, between his first and 2nd terms, issued by a Dwelling committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection by a mob of his supporters on the U.S. Capitol. Trump’s attorneys cited decades of magnificent precedent they stated shielded an ex-president from being ordered to look sooner than Congress, and the committee in a roundabout draw withdrew its subpoena.

At a signing for an unrelated bill later Tuesday, the president steered reporters the depositions for the Clintons had been “a shame” and stated of Invoice Clinton, “I continually liked him.”

He furthermore praised Hillary Clinton — his opponent in his first presidential election get in 2016 — for her debate abilities and known as her a “neat girl.”