Bill and Hillary Clinton refuse to testify on Epstein while launching attack on Donald Trump in shock letter

Former US President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, who was the Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, have announced that they are refusing to testify to Congress about their connections with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Instead, they have released a letter explaining their decision and launching into a scathing criticism of the current US government as it operates under Donald Trump.

The Clintons had been subpoenaed back in August by the Republican-led House Oversight Committee after its chair, a Republican congressman named James Comer.

Yesterday (12 January), their legal representatives sent a letter to Comer calling the subpoenas 'invalid and legally unenforceable' and claiming they were 'nothing more than a ploy to attempt to embarrass political rivals, as President Trump has directed'.

Now they have posted another letter from themselves claiming that the subpoenas were part of a process 'literally designed to result in our imprisonment'.

Bill Clinton's subpoena had commanded him to appear for testimony by today (13 January), while Hillary's date had been set for tomorrow (14 January), and Comer said he would move to hold the former president in contempt for failing to appear.

The letter addressed to Comer opens by criticising many of the Trump administration's acts as it mentions 'people have been seized by masked federal agents', criticises that people 'deported without due process', and claims 'the Justice Department has been used as a weapon at the direction of the President'.

The former US president had a well-documented friendship with the convicted sex offender Epstein, who died in 2019, and he appears in some of the documents which make up the Epstein files.

He has denied knowledge of Epstein's crimes and has not been accused of wrongdoing by survivors of Epstein's crimes.

In their joint letter, the Clintons claim they have already provided their information, saying they 'tried to give you the little information we have' and accused the committee of having 'accepted the least from those who know the most' while demanding 'the most from those who know the least'.

The Clintons claimed that Comer could 'continue to abet the dismantling of America' and accused him of handling the investigation in a way that 'prevented progress in discovering the facts about the government’s role'.

Comer argued that the former president's subpoena was 'voted on in a bipartisan manner by this committee' and said: "No one’s accusing Bill Clinton of anything, any wrongdoing. We just have questions, and that’s why the Democrats voted along with Republicans to subpoena Bill Clinton."

Sara Guerrero, a spokesperson for Democrats on the committee, said: “Cooperating with Congress is important and the committee should continue working with President Clinton’s team to obtain any information that might be relevant to our investigation.”

Only five US presidents have ever been subpoenaed to testify to Congress: Clinton, Trump, Richard Nixon, Harry Truman and John Tyler.

Of those five, only Nixon was called on to testify while he was a sitting president and only Tyler, who was president from 1841 to 1845, agreed to appear.