House Democrats are largely mum about whether they’ll help Republicans advance a pair of contempt resolutions against former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday.
The House Oversight Committee is meeting at 10 a.m. to weigh a pair of reports on holding the Clintons in contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas in the panel’s Jeffrey Epstein probe. What’s likely to be hours of debate will be followed by votes on whether to tee up those reports as House-wide votes on resolutions referring the former first couple to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for criminal prosecution.
The resolutions are likely to advance, at least along party lines. But two Democrats on the committee who spoke with Fox News Digital on Tuesday were careful to avoid making concrete decisions before the pivotal votes.
‘Right now, we should all be focused on releasing the Epstein files,’ Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., told Fox News Digital. ‘After the files are released, call in the Clintons, and they should testify, as should anyone. But it’s premature to be calling in people to testify when the files haven’t been released.’
Khanna, along with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., led a successful effort to force a vote on mandating that the DOJ release nearly all of its Epstein files.
The DOJ has yet to produce more than a fraction of the documents, however, more than a month after the deadline set by Congress.
When asked directly how he would vote regarding the Clintons on Wednesday, Khanna said, ‘I would say that they need to come in after the files are released.’
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., a first-term member of the committee, told Fox News Digital when asked how he’ll vote, ‘We’ll see how they’re treating all of the other people who have not complied completely with the committee, because I think what they’ve started doing is making this partisan.’
The Clintons were two of 10 people subpoenaed to appear before the committee after a unanimous committee vote to launch the investigation.
To date, however, just one of those original 10 people — former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr — has appeared in person. Former Trump Labor Secretary Alex Azar was also deposed pursuant to a separate subpoena.
But the Clintons are the only two so far who Republicans have pursued contempt charges against, arguing they have repeatedly refused to work with the committee in good faith on scheduling their depositions. The Clintons’ lawyers said the subpoenas are not legally valid.
‘It should be an interesting hearing, because if they’re going to hold the Clintons in contempt, I’m interested to hear if they’ll hold anyone else in contempt, including Republicans in this administration,’ Subramanyam said.
Multiple requests for comment to the remaining 19 Democrats on the committee went unanswered on Tuesday.
That includes Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the committee, who did not attend either of the panel’s scheduled depositions with the Clintons in January.
Rep. Emily Randall, D-Wash., another member of the panel, even waved Fox News Digital off during an attempt to ask about her thoughts on the Clinton contempt effort. She claimed she was engaged in an ‘intense’ conversation with a congressional aide.
Garcia had previously accused House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., of hypocrisy in trying to hold the Clintons accountable while not pushing harder to enforce the subpoena aimed at forcing the DOJ to release all of its Epstein files, which it has not yet done.
‘I think it’s incredibly hypocritical for James Comer to go out and try to hold in contempt his political enemies while [Attorney General Pam Bondi] is actively breaking the law, and he refuses to hold her in contempt,’ Garcia told MS NOW last week.
But in his opening remarks ahead of the committee meeting, Comer is expected to argue that it would be Democrats who are acting hypocritical if they do not vote to hold House-wide contempt votes.
‘We’ve offered flexibility on scheduling. The response we received was not cooperation, but defiance, marked by repeated delays, excuses, and obstruction,’ Comer will say, according to remarks obtained by Fox News Digital. ‘Today, the Clintons must be held accountable for their actions. And Democrats must support these measures, or they will be exposed as hypocrites.’
Neither of the Clintons have been implicated in any wrongdoing related to Epstein.