Former US president Bill Clinton is scheduled to answer questions the following day from the Republican-led House Oversight Committee about his relations with Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial.
The Clintons had initially rejected subpoenas ordering them to testify in the panel’s probe, but the couple eventually agreed to do so after Republicans in the House of Representatives threatened to hold them in contempt of Congress.
Democrats say the investigation is being weaponised to attack political opponents of Republican President Donald Trump – a former Epstein associate who has not been called to testify – rather than to conduct legitimate oversight.
Mr Trump and Mr Clinton feature prominently in the recently released trove of government documents related to Epstein.
However they have each said they broke ties with the financier before his 2008 conviction in Florida as a sex offender.
Mere mention in the files is not proof of having committed a crime.
The Clintons called for their depositions to be public, but the committee insisted on questioning them behind closed doors – a move Mr Clinton denounced as “pure politics” and akin to a “kangaroo court”.
“If they want answers, let’s stop the games and do this the right way: in a public hearing, where the American people can see for themselves what this is really about,” the former Democratic president said on X.
Ms Clinton, who lost the 2016 presidential election to Mr Trump, said in an interview with the BBC last week that she and her husband “have nothing to hide”.
She said she met Maxwell “on a few occasions”, but never had any meaningful interactions with Epstein.
Republicans are trying to deflect attention away from Mr Trump by having them testify, she said.
“Look at this shiny object. We’re going to have the Clintons, even Hillary Clinton, who never met the guy,” she said.
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