Former President Bill Clinton arrived at the Chappaqua Performing Arts center near his home on Friday to participate in what was expected to be hours of testimony as part of the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
His deposition marked the first time in history a former president was forced to testify before Congress against his will, and the Democratic members of the panel have immediately signaled their intention to use it as a precedent to try to force President Trump to also answer questions about his relationship with Mr. Epstein.
Mr. Clinton’s session with House lawmakers was expected to follow the same format that Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, sat through on Thursday. Her deposition, which lasted over six hours, appeared to yield no information about Mr. Epstein.
“I don’t know how many times I had to say I did not know Jeffrey Epstein,” she told reporters after the session ended. “It’s on the record numerous times.”
But Mr. Clinton did have a relationship with Epstein during the years he was building the Clinton Global Initiative, his post-presidential foundation, and Republicans said that they were eager to press him about their contacts. They also said that Mrs. Clinton had referred many of their questions to her husband and that lawmakers planned to follow up with him.
Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the committee’s chairman, declared the committee was bringing “some of the most powerful people in the world” to testify in the Epstein investigation.
He said he intended to ask about Mr. Epstein’s 17 visits to the White House while Mr. Clinton was in office, as well as photographs of the men together. “There are a lot of photos,” Mr. Comer said.
The Clintons fought for months to block the subpoenas they called invalid, unenforceable and politically motivated. They ultimately capitulated to Mr. Comer’s demands after some Democrats on the House Oversight Committee voted with Republicans to hold them in contempt of Congress if they failed to testify. Mr. Comer said on Friday that he would release the full transcript and video of Mrs. Clinton’s deposition, which she had requested to be made public, in the coming days.
House Democrats, for their part, said that while they had serious questions for Mr. Clinton, ultimately they felt they were questioning the wrong president. Representative James Walkinshaw, a Virginia Democrat, told reporters that the investigation wouldn’t be complete until Mr. Trump appears before the committee, too.
Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times.
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