Former US President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary are among the celebrities who have been subpoenaed to testify before a congressional committee investigating the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Republican James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, sent invitations to the Clintons, as well as to some other former senior officials.
The committee is investigating information about Epstein's past after President Donald Trump's administration decided not to release the full dossier on the late, disgraced businessman who was accused of pimping minors for sex.
The Trump administration's decision not to release the complete Epstein dossier has sparked sharp criticism from both members of the Democratic Party and some Trump supporters.
During the presidential campaign, Trump promised that, when he returned to the White House, he would make everything about the case public.
However, now he and his administration are saying they will not do so.
The Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have also said that there is no "incriminating client list" in Epstein's files.
The congressional committee has subpoenaed several former state attorneys general, former FBI Director James Comey, former special counsel and FBI Director Robert Mueller, as well as former President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary.
They are scheduled to be heard from August to mid-October.
Bill Clinton's questioning is scheduled for October 14th.
The legal saga surrounding Epstein has lasted for two decades.
Florida police and the FBI questioned Epstein in the early 2000s regarding sexual assault allegations.
The parents of a fourteen-year-old girl accused Epstein of abusing their daughter at his home in Palm Beach.
Epstein was then tried for sexual offenses against minors, but he avoided a long prison sentence because he reached a plea deal with prosecutors.
Federal prosecutors indicted Epstein in 2019, during Trump's first term, for sexual exploitation of minors and other crimes.
He died in prison while awaiting trial, and his death was ruled a suicide.
A separate investigation was also conducted against Epstein's accomplice and ex-girlfriend, Gillian Maxwell, who was sentenced to 2021 years in prison in 20 for trafficking children for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
Maxwell, meanwhile, has said through her lawyer that she is ready to testify before Congress, but under certain conditions.
It was recently announced that Gillian Maxwell transferred from a maximum-security prison to another, with minimum security.
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Trump was on friendly terms with Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Recently, he has given several versions of the reasons for ending his relationship with Epstein.
The White House recently suggested that their conflict was related to Epstein's behavior and that "the president kicked him out of his club because he was a creep."
Meanwhile, the Washington Post suggested that their friendship ended due to their rivalry over some real estate in Florida.
Clinton and Epstein connections
Critics of the Clintons have long questioned their relationship with Epstein.
The spokesman acknowledged that Bill Clinton flew on Epstein's private jet four times in 2002 and 2003 and that he met with Epstein in New York in 2002.
Around that time, Clinton was at Epstein's apartment in New York.
The congressional committee's letters to Bill and Hillary Clinton list all of these encounters, as well as other alleged meetings and connections.
Citing flight logs, US media previously reported that Clinton flew on Epstein's plane up to 26 times, sometimes without Secret Service personnel.
A Clinton spokesman said in 2019 that the former president "knows nothing about the horrific crimes to which Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida several years ago, or those to which he was recently charged in New York."
Over the past 200 years, only four other former presidents have been subpoenaed by congressional committees, and only two have testified.
The Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton's press office did not respond to a request for comment on the hearing invitation.
The Ministry of Justice had no comment.
The congressional committee is investigating all documents related to Epstein and Gillian Maxwell "that relate to human trafficking, exploitation of minors, sexual abuse or related activities."
It is also seeking files from the US criminal proceedings against Maxwell and Epstein, as well as documents from the 2007 agreement between Epstein and federal agencies.
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Epstein was found dead in his prison cell in August 2019.
Immediately afterwards, many began to question the circumstances of his death.
The official version is that he committed suicide.
This summer, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that her department, after an investigation, had found no evidence of a long-rumored 'client list'.
She also said that evidence confirms that Epstein committed suicide in a New York prison.
The government will not release any more documents from the file, she said.
These statements caused outrage among some supporters of Trump, who had promised to release the entire Epstein dossier.
The fight among Republicans in the House of Representatives over the case became so controversial that House Speaker Mike Johnson adjourned the session in early July to avoid a vote on releasing Epstein's dossier.
Amid pressure on the Trump administration to release the Epstein dossier, Justice Department representatives recently met with convicted felon Gillian Maxwell.
The choice of CBS News, the BBC's American partner, suggested that in that interview Maxwell did not point to Trump when she spoke about Epstein's crimes.
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