Bill and Hillary Clinton, battle-tested, gear up for another Washington fight

WASHINGTON — For some of their conservative critics, this is the scandal that could finally topple them after their resistance to testifying proved futile.

Bill and Hillary Clinton are testifying this week in a House investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, part of a deal with Republicans after it became clear that Congress — with the help of some Democrats — was on track to hold them in contempt if they refused to cooperate. Like so many of the battles the couple faced before, this one is another mix of questionable judgment, sexual impropriety, money and power.

During his 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton pitched his candidacy as "two for the price of one," previewing a presidential marriage like none that came before, with a spouse whose professional credentials rivaled his. That partnership helped the Clintons weather repeated scandals, including those so personal that many other relationships would have shattered.

When his political career ended, hers ascended when she was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York, then served as secretary of state before becoming the Democratic nominee for president in 2016.

For those who long watched the Clintons, this moment is a reminder that the couple — weaned on the politics of the Vietnam War and Watergate — was never far from the heat of a cultural fight. With the Epstein case unfolding around the world, the couple is once again ensnared in a scandal.

"It's kind of a sad but fitting coda to extraordinary political lives," said David Maraniss, who has written two biographies of Bill Clinton.

There's no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of either Clinton when it comes to Epstein, a convicted sex offender who killed himself in 2019 while he was in jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Bill Clinton's ties to Epstein

Epstein had ties to Bill Clinton for years, visiting the White House multiple times in the 1990s, according to visitor logs. After Clinton left office, Epstein was involved in his philanthropy and the former president flew multiple times on his private jet.

"Traveling on Epstein's plane was not worth the years of questioning afterward," Bill Clinton wrote in his 2024 memoir. "I wish I had never met him."

By last summer, the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas for the Clintons. For months, Bill Clinton, 79, and Hillary Clinton, 78, largely ignored the matter but that became harder to sustain in December when the former president was featured prominently in the first batch of Epstein files.

Among thousands of documents made public, photos showed him on a private plane, including one with a woman, whose face is redacted, seated alongside him with her arm around him. Another showed Bill Clinton in a pool with Epstein's longtime confidant, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, and a person whose face was redacted. Yet another photo portrayed Bill Clinton in a hot tub with a woman whose face was redacted.

The oversight panel's chairman, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, threatened to hold the Clintons in contempt if they didn't comply with the subpoenas, a historic move considering a former president has never been compelled to appear before Congress.

While there was no context surrounding the photos of Bill Clinton, they underscored how his political promise was tempered by personal indiscretions.

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The 1992 campaign that represented the emerging preeminence of the Baby Boom generation was the same one dogged by rumors of an affair with Gennifer Flowers. A presidency largely defined by economic prosperity was nearly derailed when Clinton was impeached in 1998 for lying under oath and obstructing justice when he denied engaging in a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

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As each crisis surfaced, a pattern emerged: the Clintons fiercely denied the allegations and often dismissed women who came forward with claims. They villainized the GOP and re-centered the public's attention on more favorable themes like the booming economy of the era.

Bill Clinton, who famously told voters "I feel your pain," always managed to stay connected with the public. Indeed, he enjoyed some of the highest approval numbers of his presidency during his impeachment inquiry and trial, when about 7 in 10 U.S. adults approved of the way he handled his job.

Hillary Clinton similarly dispatched Republicans who sensed an opening in her handling of a 2012 attack on a compound in Libya that killed four Americans. She came out of an 11-hour televised congressional hearing in 2015 appearing poised. Even the Republican chair of the committee probing the attack said he wasn't sure she revealed anything new about an issue many in his party considered a scandal.

That experience informed how the Clintons are approaching this week's testimony. Hillary Clinton was especially vocal in calling for the proceedings to happen in public, rather than in private as Comer planned.

"We have nothing to hide," she told the BBC this month.

Bill Clinton's communication operation took a sharper tone, recalling the political "war room" popularized during the 1992 campaign to respond to negative storylines.

One release accused Comer of "lying in every appearance he's made this week." Another mocked GOP Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona with a "hypocrisy award of the day," noting how the Oversight committee members defied subpoenas from panel investigating Trump supporters' the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Meanwhile, the Clintons released a four-page letter to Comer on social media defiantly belittling a process they said was "literally designed to result in our imprisonment."

Much as they tried to refocus attention during the 1990s, the letter hit the White House for dismantling institutions, imposing a harsh immigration crackdown and pardoning those involved in the Capitol riot.

Still, the support the Clintons enjoyed among congressional Democrats eroded — nine Democrats joined with Republicans on the House committee to advance the contempt resolution.

Photos from Epstein's estate