Congress
Bill Clinton takes his turn in House Oversight’s hot seat
Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are gearing up to spend hours today grilling former President Bill Clinton about his relationship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and longtime co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell.
It comes on the heels of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s over six hour deposition Thursday, in compliance with a subpoena issued by the panel as part of its longrunning Epstein investigation.
Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) told reporters in Chappaqua, New York, that members plan to ask about Epstein’s visits to the White House during the Clinton administration; Epstein’s emails boasting that he helped set up the Clinton Global Initiative and the Clinton Foundation; and photographs released by the Department of Justice that show the former president with unidentified women.
Comer was flanked by Republican Reps. Eric Burlison of Missouri, John McGuire of Virginia, Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin, as well as South Carolina Reps. Nancy Mace and William Timmons.
“No one’s accusing anyone of any wrongdoing, but I think the American people have a lot of questions, and our House Oversight Committee is committed to getting answers,” Comer said during a news conference before the deposition, adding that Hillary Clinton at several points the day before punted questions to her husband.
Bill Clinton has maintained he was an acquaintance of Epstein’s but stopped communicating with him at least a decade before the late financier’s arrest in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges. His spokesperson Angel Ureña said on social media in 2019 that Bill Clinton traveled on Epstein’s plane four times internationally in 2002 and 2003, adding that Secret Service details were present “on every leg of the trip.”
Hillary Clinton, during her testimony, denied ever meeting Epstein and said she had no knowledge of his or Maxwell’s crimes.
“I think it is fair to say that the vast majority of people who had contact with [Epstein] before his criminal pleas in ‘08 were like most people,” she told reporters Thursday. “They did not know what he was doing, and I think that that is exactly what my husband will testify to tomorrow.”
Republicans at their Friday morning news conference said they were unconvinced, citing an email from Epstein saying the former secretary of State “looks better in person.” Mace claimed Hillary Clinton was “screaming” during the deposition.
“She was unhinged, and I hope that President Clinton is less unhinged today than his wife was yesterday,” Mace told reporters.
Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the committee, called that an unfair characterization.
Garcia and other Democratic members of the committee — Reps. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, Wesley Bell of Missouri and Maxwell Frost of Florida, as well as Virginia Reps. Suhas Subramanyan and James Walkinshaw — each took turns speaking to the press before Bill Clinton’s deposition. They decried Republicans’ lines of questioning during Hillary Clinton’s testimony, saying it underscored the need for President Donald Trump to come before the committee, too.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who helped lead the charge to force the Justice Department to release the Epstein files, said Friday that Bill Clinton’s historic deposition sets a new standard for Oversight investigations overriding the so-called “Trump rule,” referring to the current president’s defiance of a congressional subpoena of the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attacks on the Capitol.
“Now we have the Clinton rule, which is: The presidents and their families have to testify when Congress issues a subpoena,” Khanna said. “And that means that Donald Trump needs to come before our committee and explain what he knew about Epstein and explain why we have not had a full release of the documents.”
Trump has maintained he had a falling out with Epstein years before his 2019 arrest and had no part in Epstein’s criminal activities.
House Republicans have advanced a bill that would prohibit members of Congress and their family members from trading on certain Washington-focused prediction markets.
The House Administration Committee’s GOP members on Wednesday voted along party lines in favor of the legislation, which proposes to bar lawmakers, their spouses and their dependent children from participating on prediction markets that are based on the outcome of elections or government actions.
It marks the latest in Capitol Hill’s efforts to curb the threat of insider trading on the prediction markets — a risk that has burst into the spotlight in recent months after a series of well-timed trades around the capture of then-Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, Google’s search results and the Iran war. Earlier this year, the Senate banned its members and their staffs from trading on the prediction markets altogether, effective immediately.
And yet, the House Administration Committee vote also revealed a fracture within the House over how far to go in clamping down on lawmakers’ use of the prediction markets. Democrats opposed the bill, saying it didn’t go far enough, while Republicans supported it.
Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, who is the committee’s top Democrat, argued that the legislation is “so filled with loopholes that it looks more like a sieve than a bill.” Instead of passing such a bill, he said the House should follow the Senate’s lead and approve a new and broader resolution aimed at prediction market use among members and their staffs.
“The Senate did it in a matter of minutes — no six-month grace period, no procedurally laborious process,” Morelle said. “They just went to the floor with a two-page resolution and banned it all unanimously. We should do the same.”
House Administration Chair Bryan Steil, who introduced the bill, hit back at his Democratic counterpart’s concerns by questioning why members’ families shouldn’t be allowed to bet on sports through the prediction markets — but can through sportsbooks or casinos.
The Wisconsin Republican pointed to a hypothetical scenario where a member’s child is at college and bets on a sporting event through a prediction market platform. That situation, he said, could be covered by a broader prohibition.
Steil, rather, said his bill is aimed at addressing public policy- and election-focused markets.
“Lawmakers elect to serve the American people, not to enrich themselves by wagering on outcomes from the decisions they make,” he said. “We have a real opportunity to restore trust in Congress by taking necessary steps to eliminate even the appearance of impropriety.”
House Republican leaders canceled plans to advance a procedural measure Wednesday that would set up passage of two fiscal 2027 appropriations bills and other legislation this week, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the decision ahead of a public announcement.
The decision comes amid pressure from GOP hard-liners to prioritize passage of the SAVE America Act, a Republican elections bill that has stalled in the Senate — and after President Donald Trump refused to sign a high-profile bipartisan housing bill passed Tuesday, also in a bid to get the elections bill moving.
Speaker Mike Johnson and other leaders are expected to keep members in Washington for now while they determine next steps, the people said.
Hours after Democratic socialist candidates swept to victory in New York primary races, Republicans celebrated those victories as a boon for their own party as it struggles against headwinds from the Iran war and cost of living issues ahead of the November midterms.
Inside a closed-door House GOP meeting Wednesday morning, the head of the Republican campaign arm said the victories of candidates backed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani offered an opportunity for GOP House candidates to draw a sharp contrast.
Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina said “Democrats have a Bolshevik revolution going on in their primaries,” according to three people in the room granted anonymity to discuss the private event.
Speaker Mike Johnson also delivered remarks to Republicans setting the stakes of the election after the “radical” left-wing wins and urging Republicans to dig in and raise money to defeat Democrats this fall. He received a standing ovation, the people in the room said.
Hudson said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will take the socialists’ wins as a sign he needs to navigate further to the left. There will be no cooperation with Republicans, he added.
Other Republicans publicly seized on the left-wing triumphs Wednesday, including Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio — who said “the lesson is clear: if Republicans don’t act now, we will lose this country as we know it.”
“We need to be clear about what we stand for,” he wrote on X. “Closed borders, secure elections, economic prosperity for all Americans, and, most of all, proudly protecting the American way of life against socialism.”
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