The House Oversight Committee voted Wednesday to hold former president Bill Clinton in contempt of Congress. That’s not surprising, but what is surprising is that nine Democrats sided with the Republicans. Another two profiles in Democratic courage, Reps. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona and Dave Min of California, voted “present” — maybe it was just their way of saying it depends on what your definition of contempt is.
The House Oversight Committee wanted the former president, along with former first lady and secretary of state Hillary Clinton (also held in contempt of Congress), to appear for a deposition relating to the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The Clintons say they have offered to meet with panel chairman, Republican James Comer of Kentucky) and ranking Democrat Robert Garcia (California), but couldn’t settle on the details.
“We have offered to help, we have helped, and to this very moment we are ready to help. But the Republicans REFUSE to say YES,” declared Angel Ureña, Bill Clinton’s deputy chief of staff.
In Clinton’s most recent memoir, “Citizen,” he mentions Epstein in just a brief passage. “In 2002 and 2003, he invited me to fly on his airplane to support the work of the foundation and in return for flying me, my staff, and my Secret Service detail who always accompanied me, Epstein asked only that I take an hour or two on each trip to discuss politics and economics. That was the extent of our conversations.” The name of Epstein’s notorious accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell — a guest at the 2010 wedding of the Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea — never appears in the memoir.
Now, I know this is going to shock you, but there’s reason to think that Bill Clinton’s statements related to public suspicion of sexual impropriety might not be entirely reliable. Clinton had previously claimed, through a statement from Ureña, “In 2002 and 2003, President Clinton took a total of four trips on Jeffrey Epstein’s airplane: one to Europe, one to Asia, and two to Africa, which included stops in connection with the work of the Clinton Foundation.”
Subsequent flight logs record that those four “trips” included at least 26 separate flights aboard Epstein’s plane. As the Daily Mail reported in 2020, a photo taken in 2002 shows then-22-year-old Chauntae Davies, who became an Epstein accuser, giving Clinton a shoulder massage while the plane was refueling at a small airport in Portugal, en route to Africa.
“I had always thought Epstein was odd,” Clinton wrote in the memoir, “but had no inkling of the crimes he was committing.” If only he had been aware of the plane’s nickname, the “Lolita Express,” that might have given him an inkling.
Donald Trump in 2002 said of Epstein to New York magazine: “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.” Former Trump adviser Roger Stone, in his 2015 book, “The Clintons’ War on Women,” quotes Trump as saying, “The one time I visited [Epstein’s] Palm Beach home, the swimming pool was full of beautiful young girls. ‘How nice,’ I thought, ‘he let the neighborhood kids use his pool.’”
It is amazing that some of the sharpest and most successful men on the planet hung around with Epstein, and, in their telling, never noticed anything that warranted wariness or alarm. They have amazing instincts everywhere else in life, but the moment they hung around Epstein, they had all the sharp-eyed perceptiveness of Mr. Magoo.
Given the House Democrats voting to hold Clinton in contempt of Congress, it’s clearer than ever that his political immunity within the Democratic Party over his own sexual improprieties has expired. It was a long time coming, and seems possible only in the aftermath of the #MeToo movement. If you have a long enough memory, you can recall that just about everybody in the party, including many self-described feminists, vehemently defended Clinton in the 1990s, insisting it was nobody’s business if the 49-year-old, married president was involved with a 22-year-old White House intern.
In theory, every major figure in public life insists that Epstein’s crimes were horrific and those who also exploited underage women need to be exposed and prosecuted. But something always seems to go wrong, doesn’t it? On the campaign trail in 2024, Trump more than once said he would release “the Epstein files,” and his running mate, JD Vance, made a similar pledge. But by July, Trump was demanding that Republicans “not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.”
In a near-unanimous vote in November, Congress sets a deadline for the release of all Justice Department files relating to Epstein — but the department misses the deadline and says it doesn’t know when it will be done reviewing all of the documents. Bill Clinton insists through his spokesperson that he wants to help but that congressional Republicans just won’t let him.
It’s amazing how everybody says they want to get to the bottom of this … right up until the moment it becomes inconvenient.
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