JONATHAN TURLEY: Clintons dare House to hold them in criminal contempt. Will it work?
Woody Allen famously said, "80% of success in life is just showing up." When it comes to Bill and Hillary Clinton and possible congressional contempt, it may be 100%. The two politicians have decided to defy lawful subpoenas issued by the House. For the House Oversight Committee, now is also the time for contempt proceedings.
Chairman James Comer and the House Oversight Committee are investigating the Jeffrey Epstein controversy and have subpoenaed the Clintons to testify. Neither has been accused of criminal conduct.
The Clintons failed to appear and, instead, issued a chest-thumping letter of defiance, declaring:
"Every person has to decide when they have seen or had enough and are ready to fight for this country, its principles and its people, no matter the consequences. For us, now is that time."
The Committee is likely to agree that "now is that time" and the consequences are the start of contempt proceedings.
On August 5, 2025, the Committee approved the subpoenas. Former President Clinton’s deposition was initially set for October 14, 2025. It was then moved to December 17, 2025.
In December, Comer postponed the depositions for a second time to allow the Clintons to attend a funeral. However, he said that their counsel, David Kendall, then declined to offer any alternative dates.
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The vote to issue the subpoena was taken on an unusual bipartisan basis for the often divided Committee. Even Democratic members on the Oversight Committee, such as Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said that the Clintons must comply.
There was a time when subpoenas were viewed as more than discretionary matters. Counsel has insisted that the testimony is unnecessary and a distraction. However, that is not a ground that any court would view as justification for knowingly and repeatedly ignoring a lawfully issued subpoena.
The position of the Clintons seems a repeat of the defiance of Hunter Biden, who chose to hold a press conference outside of Congress rather than appear inside for his deposition. He was accompanied by Democratic members like Eric Swalwell.
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At one time, Democrats were aghast at those who might defy congressional subpoenas.
President Joe Biden maintained that defying subpoenas cannot be tolerated. When subpoenas were issued to Republicans during the House’s January 6 investigation, Biden declared: "I hope that the committee goes after them and holds them accountable criminally."
Two Trump associates — Steven Bannon and Peter Navarro — refused to appear in the House and were quickly held in contempt by a majority of the House, including Swalwell.
I wrote at the time that these individuals were also undeniably in contempt of Congress.
Now, however, such defiance is viewed as righteous and somehow excusable by figures such as New York Representative Dan Goldman, who has routinely chosen political over institutional interests.
The defiance could result in a criminal referral for the couple, prosecutions that would mirror those under the Biden administration.
In 2021, Hillary Clinton mocked Bannon's indictment for contempt of Congress by saying that she planned for a "restful" weekend as he prepared for possible conviction.
It is an ironic moment. The Clintons are adopting the Bannon strategy that led to his conviction.
At the time of Bannon's charge, I noted that all he had to do was appear and invoke his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. The Committee would then have had to issue an immunity grant to compel any testimony. The worst thing that you could do is not appear.
That is precisely what the Clintons just did.
In reality, I expect that neither Clinton is losing any sleep over the prospect of a criminal charge. They have spent their career dodging such prosecutions. Of course, this is a Republican-controlled House and a Republican administration.
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What is most striking is the lack of any effort to come up with a cognizable defense. The Clintons simply chose open defiance. For those who have denounced a two-tier justice system, there is nothing more entitled and privileged than this letter. Such rules do not apply to the Clintons, who feel that they have the license to decide when they will appear.
They are wrong and, like Bannon, left themselves no viable legal defense. They are simply asserting a type of de facto Clinton immunity that could leave even a sympathetic federal district court judge with no real alternative to trial. David Kendall is an experienced lawyer, and perhaps he will reveal a legal defense that escapes me. For the moment, I am baffled by the legal strategy. Indeed, I see no intelligible legal strategy at all in effectively saying that "we simply do not feel like it."
They seem to be repeating the same pitch that Bill Clinton gave in the Lewinsky matter: "I ask you to turn away from the spectacle of the past seven months, to repair the fabric of our national discourse, and to return our attention to all the challenges and all the promise of the next American century.
Despite a federal judge finding that Clinton lied under oath, it worked. The problem is that a defendant like Clinton can always argue in a perjury case that "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." In this case, it does not depend on what the meaning of the word "testify" is. Whatever the meaning, showing up is a critical element. It is hard to argue that you are not in contempt when you make your contempt for the Committee your defense.