Bill Clinton is making it clear he’s willing to testify about Jeffrey Epstein. What he’s not willing to do, he says, is walk into what he says is a Republican-engineered ambush designed for headlines rather than answers.
In a series of posts on X, the former president blasted House Republicans over the terms of his expected testimony related to the Epstein files, accusing GOP investigators of trying to stage a spectacle behind closed doors while pretending it’s about transparency.
“I have called for the full release of the Epstein files. I have provided a sworn statement of what I know. And just this week, I’ve agreed to appear in person before the committee,” Clinton wrote. “But it’s still not enough for Republicans on the House Oversight Committee.”
The dispute isn’t about whether Clinton will testify. It’s about how. Republicans on the House Oversight Committee, led by Chairman James Comer, have been pushing for a private session — a move Clinton is framing as political theater disguised as oversight.
“Now, Chairman Comer says he wants cameras, but only behind closed doors. Who benefits from this arrangement?” Clinton wrote. “It’s not Epstein’s victims, who deserve justice. Not the public, who deserve the truth. It serves only partisan interests. This is not fact-finding, it’s pure politics.”
He didn’t stop there. “I will not sit idly as they use me as a prop in a closed-door kangaroo court by a Republican Party running scared,” Clinton added in another post. “If they want answers, let’s stop the games & do this the right way: in a public hearing, where the American people can see for themselves what this is really about.”
The exchange highlights what’s increasingly becoming a familiar dynamic on Capitol Hill: Republicans loudly demanding transparency while simultaneously preferring the kind of closed-door setting that allows for selective leaks and carefully edited outrage cycles. Clinton, for his part, appears eager to flip that script by insisting on a public hearing, a stance that, inconveniently for his critics, aligns with years of bipartisan calls to make the Epstein record as open as possible.
The Epstein saga, which continues to ensnare high-profile names across politics, finance, and media, has been a magnet for congressional grandstanding since the financier’s 2019 death in federal custody. Republicans have argued their investigation is about accountability. Democrats have countered that the GOP’s approach often looks less like a search for truth and more like an opposition-research exercise dressed up as oversight.
Clinton has long acknowledged that he flew on Epstein’s plane in the early 2000s and has repeatedly said he cut off contact well before Epstein’s 2019 arrest. A spokesperson for Clinton said in 2019 that he “knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago or those with which he has been recently charged.” Those statements have remained consistent, even as Epstein-related documents and testimony have continued to surface through lawsuits and court releases.
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What’s changed now is the political context. Clinton is clearly trying to force the confrontation into the open. By demanding a public hearing, he’s betting that transparency works in his favor and that Republicans might be less interested in a televised exchange where viewers can judge the substance for themselves.
Clinton’s message in his posts was blunt: he says he’s ready to testify and has already provided sworn statements, but he’s not interested in playing along with what he sees as a pre-packaged GOP narrative. “If they want answers,” he wrote, “let’s stop the games.”
Whether Republicans agree to those terms remains to be seen. But for now, Clinton is leaning into a simple argument that’s hard to spin: if this investigation is really about the truth, then why keep it behind closed doors?