Bill and Hillary Clinton have refused to testify in a Republican-led congressional investigation into the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, claiming it was a partisan, politically motivated action.
"Each person must decide when they have seen or experienced enough and are ready to fight for this country, its principles and its people, no matter the consequences," the Clintons wrote in a letter to Republican Congressman James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee. "For us, that moment is now."
Comer, Reuters reports, threatened to hold the Clintons in contempt of Congress if they did not appear before the committee, potentially leading to criminal charges.
In the letter, which Hillary Clinton shared on social media, the Clintons said they tried to provide what "little information" they had to help the investigation and accused Comer of diverting attention from the failures of the Donald Trump administration.
"We did this because Mr. Epstein's crimes were horrific. If the Government, for whatever reason, has not done everything it could to investigate and prosecute these crimes, that should be the focus of your work... There is no evidence that you are doing so," they wrote.
"There is no plausible explanation for what you are doing, other than partisan interests," they added, adding that they expect Komer to order the committee to declare them in contempt of Congress.
President Trump's administration, under pressure from his political base, has ordered the US Justice Department to release files related to criminal investigations into Epstein - a former friend of Trump and the Clintons - in accordance with a transparency law passed by Congress, Reuters reports.
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