OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
5:46 PM – Tuesday, January 13, 2026
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer has announced that the panel will be initiating contempt of Congress proceedings against former President Bill Clinton, after he failed to appear for a subpoenaed closed-door deposition related to the committee’s ongoing investigation into child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
The Committee will initiate the contempt proceedings as early as next week, according to a press release.
The deposition had been scheduled for Tuesday morning as part of the Republican-led committee’s probe into the U.S. government’s handling of Epstein, who allegedly died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.
The subpoena, issued in August last year, was approved unanimously by both Republicans and Democrats on the committee, according to Chairman Comer (R-Ky.).
“Not a single Democrat showed up today [to the deposition]. Not a single Democrat—the ones who have press conferences on the Capitol steps and talk about how they’re trying to get justice for the victims and all that. It just seems like they only care about questioning Republicans.”
“And we’ve had a former cabinet secretary, [Alex] Acosta, in for a grilling. We had Bill Barr, former attorney general, in for a grilling. But for whatever reason, President Clinton didn’t show up, and the Democrats on the committee don’t seem to have a problem,” Comer noted.
“We’ve communicated with President Clinton’s legal team for months now, giving them opportunity after opportunity to come in, to give us a day, and they continue to delay, delay, delay to the point where we had no idea whether they were going to show up today or not. I think it’s very disappointing,” Comer said, speaking to reporters outside the hearing room after Clinton did not appear.
“As a result of Bill Clinton not showing up for his lawful subpoena, which again, was voted on unanimously by the committee in a bipartisan manner, we will move next week in the House Oversight Committee markup to hold former President Clinton in contempt of Congress.”
Comer reiterated that the subpoena was bipartisan and not an accusation of wrongdoing against Clinton, but rather, an effort to gather information. “No one’s accusing Bill Clinton of anything, any wrongdoing. We just have questions,” he added.
The former Democrat president has been referenced multiple times in previously unsealed court documents and investigative materials connected to Epstein, most notably in flight logs from Epstein’s private jet.
These logs, which became public through various civil lawsuits and were further corroborated in releases around 2019 and the major Department of Justice (DOJ) document dumps in 2024 and December 2025, show Clinton as a passenger on “at least 17 to 26” individual flight segments between 2001 and 2003.
Clinton has consistently denied any knowledge of or involvement in Epstein’s criminal activities, including the sex trafficking of minors. His spokespeople have repeatedly claimed that he had no awareness of Epstein’s “terrible crimes” and that contact between the two ceased around 2003 — before Epstein’s 2005 Florida investigation became public.
Clinton has also claimed that he never visited the island.
In a letter released earlier on Tuesday, attorneys for Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is scheduled for her own deposition on Wednesday, argued that the subpoena was invalid and unenforceable.
They criticized the subpoenas as lacking a valid legislative purpose and asserted they had already provided all the relevant information they possessed, setting up a refusal to appear.
The contempt process, if approved by the full committee next week, could lead to a House floor vote recommending referral to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for potential criminal prosecution. Further developments are expected following next week’s committee markup.
Contempt of Congress is a misdemeanor punishable by fines and up to one year in prison.
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