Bill and Hillary Clinton on Tuesday requested that they be allowed to testify in public at hearings in the House Oversight Committee’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation, escalating their battle with Republicans the day before the House is set to vote to hold them in contempt of Congress.
The move appeared to be an effort to prevent House Republican from selectively releasing unflattering exchanges from videotaped depositions of the former president and former secretary of state, who capitulated under pressure on Monday and agreed to be interviewed in the inquiry.
It came after Representative James E. Comer of Kentucky, the Republican chairman of the oversight panel, on Tuesday morning issued new demands of the Clintons.
Mr. Comer said he would proceed with the criminal contempt vote, scheduled for Wednesday, unless the couple gave him dates this month for their all-day depositions. And he said that both would have to be recorded on video.
He set a noon deadline for them to comply with his demands.
In response, the Clintons’s lawyers said that Mrs. Clinton would be available on Feb. 26 for her deposition and Mr. Clinton would be available on Feb. 27 for his. After months of resisting subpoenas that they described as invalid and legally unenforceable, the Clintons on Monday night backed down and agreed to testify in the panel’s investigation into Mr. Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died in prison in 2019. And on Tuesday, they made a demand of their own, requesting that the entire proceedings be made public.
“Despite our unambiguous agreement to all of his terms last night, you added new stipulations this morning, for the first time, most notably the requirement of videotaping the interview,” the Clintons’s legal team wrote in an email to Mr. Comer on Tuesday morning, which was obtained by The New York Times.
“Though you have notably never asked the Clintons to appear in an open hearing, we now believe that will best suit our concerns about fairness,” the letter said. “Their answers, and your questions, can be seen by all to be judged accordingly.”
Mr. Comer said in a statement on Tuesday that the Clintons would sit for transcribed, filmed depositions this month and that the contempt vote was canceled. He did not acknowledge the request for public hearings.
“Once it became clear that the House of Representatives would hold them in contempt, the Clintons completely caved,” he said, adding that the panel looked forward to questioning them as part of the investigation into the “horrific crimes” of Mr. Epstein and his longtime companion, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times.
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