For months, former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have played dilatory games with the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee that was deadly serious about forcing them to testify in its inquiry into the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking scandal. On Wednesday, the Committee voted to hold them in contempt of Congress.
There was significant Democratic support for citing both Clintons. Democrats are preparing to go scorched-earth against President Trump and his subordinates the moment they regain control of a congressional chamber; they were not, out of whatever sentimental attachment to the Clintons they may still have, going to create a precedent allowing former presidents and top executive officials to dodge committee subpoenas. The margin on the former president was 34-8, with nine Democrats in favor of contempt and two voting “present”; as for the former secretary, it was 28-15, with three Democrats voting in favor and one “present.”
That makes it a near certainty that the full House will vote in favor of the contempt resolution, and that the House will urge the Trump Justice Department to file criminal charges.
This is a live by the sword, die by the sword proposition for both sides.
President Trump was furious that his MAGA base continued to beat the Epstein drums when he had repeatedly called on them to desist. They defied him because, with Trump’s encouragement while he was out of power, some top MAGA rabble-rousers exhorted the base to believe the Biden Justice Department was covering up the scandal to protect such prominent Democrats as Clinton.
I’ll come back to why that was illogical to believe. The point is that Trump, who had a close relationship with Epstein during the time the Justice Department has alleged Epstein was a quite-active pedophile, had as much as anyone to lose (politically speaking) from perpetuation of the Epstein scandal. Consequently, when he won in 2024, with the result that the rabble-rousers (like Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, and Dan Bongino) suddenly found themselves in high-ranking law enforcement posts — i.e., in a position to prove and disclose the hyperbolic claims they’d made for years about an Epstein cover-up — even Trump was not able to get his base to relent.
In his rage, Trump inveighed that the media and the public should be scrutinizing Epstein’s Democratic pals, such as Bill Clinton, insisting they were much more involved (which he implied meant culpably involved) with Epstein than Trump had been. Once Trump realized, to his chagrin, that MAGA would not go silent, he pivoted to a pose of complete disclosure. That’s what Congress was demanding — with Democrats unified because they knew the subject enraged Trump, and a few Republicans (including such erstwhile MAGA faves as Marjorie Taylor Greene) breaking ranks with the president.
The Trump administration’s sudden conversion to disclosure really is just a pose. Congress’s Epstein legislation was written in a manner that allows the Trump Justice Department to withhold materials that are relevant to ongoing investigations (and the Trump DOJ gets to decide what’s relevant). Naturally, after first saying there was nothing more to investigate, the DOJ and FBI cynically reopened the investigation. Hence, rather than mass disclosure, we have gotten gradual, curated disclosure, with an emphasis on ties between Epstein and Democrats — such as last month’s publication of humiliating photos of Bill Clinton cavorting with Epstein, Epstein’s coconspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, and what appear to be young girls.
Under Bondi, when Trump says jump, the DOJ tries to jump — even if the result is retributive lawfare prosecutions that prove to be laughably weak (e.g., James Comey and Letitia James). Bondi is under enormous pressure from Trump and MAGA due to her inability to deliver on many of Trump’s demands: e.g., additional indictments related to Epstein, Russiagate, the Biden administration’s autopen use, and such political enemies as Senator Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), Jack Smith, Lisa Cook, et al.; plus, yesterday in Davos, the president claimed that prosecutions related to the supposedly stolen 2020 election were coming — I guess we’ll see.
In light of that pressure, I don’t see how Bondi will be able to resist demands that she indict the Clintons once the full House votes for contempt.
I doubt it will be the catharsis Trump and MAGA are hoping for. A prosecution of the Clintons will keep Epstein in the news, which is not what Trump wants. It will highlight the selective disclosures and the administration’s kid-gloves treatment of Maxwell (who has been mysteriously moved to a low-security prison since a meeting to be interviewed by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and who is now agitating for a pardon, or at least a commutation from her 20-year incarceration sentence).
The Clintons have great lawyers and a public relations machine that will give prosecutors fits. And a Trump prosecution of the Clintons will redouble Democrats in their commitment to impeaching Trump if, as is highly likely, they take control of the House after the November midterms. They intend to make lawfare life as miserable as possible for every Trump official in the years to come.
On that score, remember: While President Trump can preemptively pardon his subordinates and allies from federal prosecution for actions taken prior to the pardon, he cannot pardon for prospective misconduct. That is, he cannot protect anyone (himself included) from prosecution for false statements and obstruction in future investigations. Democrats are determined to conduct such investigations; they will be endless and cost Trump officials millions of dollars in legal fees, lost opportunities, and anxiety. Also, Trump can’t protect anyone from state prosecutions if — as happened to Trump himself and many of his family members and allies — Democratic district attorneys and attorneys general decided to get in on the anti-Trump lawfare.
People like moi pleaded with Trump to be the president who ended lawfare, which would have been extremely popular. Trump has done the opposite. He will reap the whirlwind, as will the country. Progressives, who call the tune in Democratic Party politics, will accept nothing less.
As for the Clintons’ contempt citation (and other lawfare to come), the Democrats, too, are reaping what they’ve sown.
Besides hounding Trump with lawsuits (some frivolous, some not), Democrats used their Biden-era control of Congress to harass and punish officials and advisers from Trump’s first term. Trump-allied Republicans claimed this was an abuse of Congress’s oversight powers — that such escapades as the jihad to obtain Trump’s financial records and to grill the likes of Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro over the events leading to the Capitol riot were just political harassment devoid of any legislative purpose. In federal jurisprudence, however, Congress is given very broad discretion both to investigate and to decide — without court interference — what is a proper legislative purpose for seeking information. And, contrary to prosecutions in court, there is no real expectation that Congress — an innately political body — must avoid selective, vindictive exploitation of its investigative and oversight powers.
That is why the Clintons are being held in contempt. They desperately tried to delay their appearance before the Oversight Committee chaired by Representative James Comer (R., Ky.), and to propose alternatives to being deposed under oath. But they had no chance of getting their subpoenas quashed in federal court — not after the zeal with which Democrats pursued Trump’s records, the hostile interrogations of Trump’s family members at Democratic-led hearings, and the contempt of Congress prosecutions that resulted in the imprisonment of Bannon and Navarro. No one is more acquainted than Bill and Hill with the first rule of politics: What goes around comes around.
The Epstein frenzy remains ridiculous. There was no reason to believe the Biden Justice Department, which was looking for anything that could possibly be pinned on Trump, would have sat on incriminating Epstein evidence just to avoid embarrassing the Clintons — who just don’t have the same kind of suasion over what’s a very different party than the one they led 20 years ago.
If the DOJ had been trying to bury explosive Epstein evidence, prosecutors would never have indicted Epstein, thoroughly investigated his suicide, and then indicted Maxwell. Each of those probes required scouring the government’s files; the decisions to prosecute forced the government to produce massive discovery. When prosecutors trigger discovery — which requires providing closely held information to the likes of Maxwell and her lawyers, who know much more about Epstein’s activities than DOJ prosecutors and FBI agents — they have no control over what is going to be uncovered.
Moreover, the Southern District of New York (SDNY) prosecutors who ran the Epstein investigation would have been delighted to bring cases against Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, or other celebrities if the evidence had been there. For prosecutors, those cases are career-makers. I was still at the SDNY when it tried very hard to develop a prosecution based on the corrupt pardons Clinton issued as he left office; and we know — based on the Michael Cohen prosecution — that the SDNY was trying to make a criminal case against Trump. There were no indictments in these matters because of legal complications and lack of evidence, not lack of will.
Federal sex-trafficking cases are very hard to make. The crime is not having sex with minors. That’s a state crime, not something the Justice Department has jurisdiction over. In essence, the feds have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone is in the business of moving people, including children, in interstate commerce for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Riding on Epstein’s plane, visiting Epstein’s island, or even (if it could be proved) having sexual contact with a minor would not be enough to prove a person was complicit in Epstein’s sexual-trafficking enterprise. If you scrutinize the Epstein and Maxwell indictments, you quickly realize the crime is the trafficking business, not just the sex.
There haven’t been more Epstein prosecutions because there is insufficient evidence to bring federal charges. Of course there is a ton of evidence that would embarrass the people who were in and around this deviant activity. The problem is that the Justice Department is supposed to concern itself only with evidence that incriminates people, not that merely humiliates them. Sadly, the politics has led Washington to abandon the law so it can dig into the humiliation theater. We will come to regret it, even more than is already obvious.
By – https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/01/house-committee-finds-bill-and-hillary-clinton-in-contempt/
