Bill Clinton Appears Somber Ahead of Congressional Testimony Commitment

Bill Clinton appeared somber as he strolled through New York City on Tuesday, having just agreed to testify before Congress regarding his alleged connections with Jeffrey Epstein.

The 79-year-old former president was seen en route to a business engagement in Manhattan, marking his first public appearance since both he and his wife, Hillary, succumbed to mounting demands to address inquiries.

Clad in a dark overcoat paired with black trousers and brown shoes, Clinton, wearing glasses, kept his gaze fixed on the ground as he made his way to the building.

This decision by the Clintons comes as a notable shift from their previous stance, occurring just days before Congress was poised to vote on potentially charging them with criminal contempt.

For several months, the former president and the ex-secretary of state had been dismissing subpoenas from Representative James Comer of Kentucky, who chairs the committee from the Republican side.

Donald Trump addressed the situation while taking questions from the press Tuesday, where he expressed sympathy for his former political rivals. 

‘I think it’s a shame, to be honest. I always liked him,’ Trump said of former President Clinton. 

As for Hillary, despite having defeated her in the brutal 2016 presidential campaign, he had nice things to say about the woman he notoriously dubbed ‘Crooked Hillary.’

Bill Clinton appeared downcast while walking through New York City Tuesday, shortly after agreeing to testify to Congress over his alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein

The former president, 79, was spotted heading to a business meeting in the Big Apple in his first public sighting since both he and wife Hillary relented on pressure to answer questions

‘Her, she’s a very capable woman. She was better at debating than some of the other people. I will tell you that. She was smarter. Smart woman. I hate to see it in many ways,’ he said.

While he felt for the Clintons, he was still not willing to forget the treatment he’d received by them over the so-called ‘Russia hoax.’ 

‘I hate to see it, but, you know, then I look at me, they went after me like, you know, they wanted me to go to jail for the rest of my life. Then it turned out I was innocent,’ he said.

The Clintons had argued that James Comers’ demands were not legally valid and accused him of using the investigation as a political weapon at Trump’s direction.

Their position shifted after several Democrats on the committee joined Republicans in supporting a recommendation to refer the Clintons to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. 

It marks a rare and dramatic escalation that would have been an unprecedented move against a former first couple.

Wearing a dark overcoat, black slacks and brown shoes, the bespectacled Clinton stared at the ground as he walked toward a building

Donald Trump addressed the situation while taking questions from the press Tuesday, where he expressed sympathy for his former political rivals

Following that vote, lawyers for the Clintons contacted Comer on Monday evening to confirm that both would sit for depositions at dates to be agreed upon, and urged the committee to abandon its plans to proceed with the contempt vote scheduled for later this week.

‘They negotiated in good faith. You did not,’ spokesmen for the Clintons said in a statement. ‘They told under oath what they know, but you did not care. But the former president and former secretary of state will be there.’ 

The move advanced Comer’s broader strategy of redirecting his committee’s Epstein investigation away from scrutiny of Trump’s past connections to the financier and toward high-profile Democrats who had social or professional ties to Epstein and his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell.

In a letter sent to Comer over the weekend and obtained by The New York Times, attorneys for Clinton made a final attempt to shape the terms of any testimony. 

They proposed that the former president participate in a four-hour recorded interview with the full committee – a format Clinton had previously criticized as excessive and without modern precedent.

Comer rejected the Clintons’ offer, calling it ‘unreasonable’ arguing that four hours of testimony from President Clinton was inadequate given that he was a ‘loquacious individual’ and would look to run out the clock. 

The lawyers also requested that Hillary Clinton be allowed to submit a sworn written statement instead of appearing in person, citing her claim that she never met or communicated with Epstein. 

‘Your clients’ desire for special treatment is both frustrating and an affront to the American people’s desire for transparency,’ Comer wrote in a letter to the Clintons’ lawyers on Monday in a letter that was seen by the Times. 

Photos of President Clinton have been featured throughout recent releases of the ‘Epstein files’

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has claimed she never met or communicated with Epstein

However, they added that she would still agree to an in-person interview if required, noting that any such session should reflect the limited relevance of her knowledge to the investigation.

President Clinton had asked Comer for scope of the interview to be restricted to matters relating to Epstein – but Come rejected that plea.

Comer went on to explain that he believed the former president ‘likely has an artificially narrow definition in mind’ of what matters would be related to the Epstein investigation.

He said he was concerned President Clinton would refuse to answer questions about ‘his personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, ways in which they sought to curry favor with powerful individuals and alleged efforts to utilize his power and influence after his presidency to kill negative news stories about Jeffrey Epstein.’

In a sharp reversal, the Clintons responded Comer’s letter on Monday night by accepting every condition he had laid out, agreeing to remove any restrictions on the length of Bill Clinton’s deposition or the scope of questioning Republicans could pursue.

The only concession Comer had previously been willing to make was allowing the interviews to take place in New York, where the Clintons are based.

President Clinton has acknowledged knowing Epstein, who died in jail in 2019, but has maintained that he never visited Epstein’s private island and severed ties with him roughly 20 years ago.

But flight records show that Clinton took four overseas trips on Epstein’s private aircraft in 2002 and 2003.

The former president and former secretary of state had spent months rejecting subpoenas issued by Representative James Comer of Kentucky (pictured), the committee’s Republican chairman

President Bill Clinton, center, poses with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, right, and Ghislaine Maxwell, 2nd right, in an undated photo from an undisclosed location

The Democrat claims the pair were barely buddies, denies knowledge of Epstein’s sex trafficking network, and insists he never set foot on Little Saint James – nicknamed ‘Pedo Island’ and the setting for multiple bouts of sexual abuse.

Although several House Democrats voted alongside Republicans last month to advance contempt charges against the Clintons, others voiced strong objections – particularly over the decision to involve Hillary Clinton at all.

‘I’m not seeing anything to suggest she ought to be a part of this in any way,’ said Representative Kweisi Mfume, a Maryland Democrat, during a committee hearing last month. 

He added that it appeared the former secretary of state had been included simply because ‘we want to dust her up a bit if we get her before this committee.’

Many Democrats, however, have been wary of appearing to defend anyone connected to Epstein, particularly figures as politically polarizing as the Clintons.

For the former first couple, the episode has felt like another chapter in what they view as a decades-long campaign of Republican investigations and attacks.

In their January letter to Comer, the Clintons accused him of risking paralysis of Congress in pursuit of what they described as a partisan operation ‘literally designed to result in our imprisonment.’

Bill Clinton’s agreement to testify in the Epstein inquiry would place him among rare company. 

The last time a former president appeared before Congress was in 1983, when Gerald R. Ford testified about preparations for the 1987 celebration marking 200 years since the Constitution’s ratification. 

By contrast, when Donald Trump was subpoenaed in 2022 by the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol, he responded by filing a lawsuit to block the demand, and the panel later dropped the subpoena.