Hillary and Bill Clinton are now objecting to the videotaping of their private depositions before the House Oversight Committee — depositions they already agreed to sit for. The dispute threatens to derail scheduled appearances on Feb. 26 and Feb. 27 in connection with the committee's probe into Jeffrey Epstein.
The agreement for those depositions halted the House from moving forward with a floor vote to hold the Clintons in criminal contempt of Congress. That deal, reached after a months-long back-and-forth between Clinton lawyers and the committee, appeared to settle the matter. Now the Clintons want to rewrite the terms.
Bill Clinton, the 42nd president, posted a statement Friday framing the entire process as a partisan setup:
"Chairman Comer says he wants cameras, but only behind closed doors. It serves only partisan interests. This is not fact-finding, it's pure politics."
He followed that with a sharper line:
"I will not sit idly as they use me as a prop in a closed-door kangaroo court."
The rhetoric is unmistakable. A former president who agreed to appear under oath is now publicly campaigning against the conditions of that appearance — conditions his own legal team negotiated.
Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, the Kentucky Republican, responded over the weekend with considerably less theatrics and considerably more documentation, Punchbowl News reported. His committee released correspondence with the Clintons' legal team showing that video guidelines were discussed throughout the negotiation process. Recording depositions, Comer noted, is common practice for House proceedings.
"The Clintons are now pushing a false narrative to play victim."
Comer also made clear that the Clintons' preferred alternative — public hearings — isn't off the table. It's just not a substitute for the depositions they already committed to:
"The Clintons can have their hearing after completing the depositions they agreed to."
That distinction matters. A deposition is a fact-finding tool — questions under oath, follow-ups, and detailed examination. A public hearing is a performance stage. The Clintons aren't asking for more transparency. They're asking for a format where cameras serve their interests, where opening statements and five-minute rounds replace sustained questioning.
Anyone who's watched a congressional hearing knows the difference. Depositions produce answers. Hearings produce clips.
While the Clintons wage a media campaign against sitting for questions, Ghislaine Maxwell was scheduled to be deposed virtually by the Oversight Committee today. According to Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, Maxwell's lawyers have indicated she intends to invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
That backdrop makes the Clinton maneuvering all the more striking. Maxwell, according to a New York Times report published Sunday, was integral in setting up the Clinton Global Initiative, including helping set up funding for it. The committee is probing the Clintons' relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell — Epstein's most notorious associate — helped build the infrastructure of one of the Clintons' signature philanthropic ventures.
And she's pleading the Fifth.
The Clintons, for their part, aren't invoking any constitutional right. They're not claiming privilege. They're complaining about cameras — in depositions they agreed to, under terms their lawyers helped shape, to avoid being held in criminal contempt of Congress.
The Clinton playbook here is vintage. Agree to cooperate when the legal pressure peaks. Then, once the contempt threat recedes, contest the terms. Shift the argument from substance to process. Call it partisan. Call it a kangaroo court. Make the investigation the story instead of what the investigation might uncover.
It worked for decades in Washington. The question is whether it works now, with a committee that holds the contempt card and has already shown willingness to play it.
Consider the sequence: the Clintons' lawyers negotiated for months. They reached a deal. The deal prevented a criminal contempt vote. Video was discussed throughout those negotiations, per the committee's own correspondence. And now — with the deposition days away — Bill Clinton takes to social media to recast the entire arrangement as an ambush.
If the videotaping terms were unacceptable, the time to reject them was during the months of negotiation, not two weeks before the deposition date. The timing suggests this isn't a procedural objection. It's a pressure campaign designed to either extract new concessions or manufacture a pretext for non-compliance.
The Feb. 26 and Feb. 27 dates remain on the calendar. If the Clintons refuse to appear under the agreed-upon terms, the contempt question resurfaces — this time with even less sympathy for the subjects, who struck a deal and then tried to wriggle out of it.
Meanwhile, Maxwell invokes the Fifth from behind a screen, and a New York Times report draws a line between her and the financial scaffolding of the Clinton Global Initiative. The committee's probe is pulling threads that the Clintons clearly prefer stay untugged.
Bill Clinton says he won't be a "prop." But a man who voluntarily agreed to testify under oath, then launched a public campaign to avoid the format he negotiated, isn't fighting for principle. He's fighting for control of the frame.
The cameras, it turns out, are only a problem when you can't pick the angle.
