After a prolonged legal standoff, Bill and Hillary Clinton testified last week to the House Oversight Committee about Jeffrey Epstein. Predictably, nothing much of substance came from either deposition. Hillary plainly had no relevant information, and Bill admitted nothing. 

This week, with its subpoena of Attorney General Pam Bondi and its agreement with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick for his testimony, the Committee displayed its willingness to demand answers even from those sitting on high perches. Those moves, coupled with the recent testimony from the former First Couple, tee up an even higher-stakes showdown ahead: Will Donald Trump be next? 

Hillary Clinton’s testimony was, unsurprisingly, pointless. The committee’s subpoena to the former Secretary of State was an unserious bit of political showboating by chairman James Comer and other Republicans bent on creating sizzle with a boldface name and settling decades-old grudges. Clinton told the committee in advance she had never even met Epstein and knew nothing about his misdeeds; she said precisely the same at her deposition; and the Committee members essentially nodded along, asked her about space aliens and Pizzagate, then thanked her for serving as a shiny prop to draw media attention. 

Hillary’s most memorable moment came when she eviscerated Rep. Lauren Boebert for leaking a photo from inside the deposition room, violating Boebert’s own party’s procedural rules. Even conservatives praised Clinton for putting a thirsty buffoon in her place.

Bill Clinton is a different story. His testimony was downright Clintonian (defined by the Urban Dictionary as a statement that “typically skirts the issue or spins words”). The former President began by congratulating himself for coming forward out of a sense of patriotic duty and a deep moral obligation to protect Epstein’s victims – never mind that Clinton defied the Committee’s subpoena for months, no-showed for his original testimony date, and then relented only after a bipartisan group of committee members, including nine Democrats, voted to hold him in contempt. 

Clinton testified that, at bottom, “I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong.” “If I had any inkling of what he was doing,” Clinton professed, “I would have turned him in myself.” Let’s assume the truth of Clinton’s claim that he “did nothing wrong.” Fine; there’s no evidence to the contrary. 

But the “saw nothing” part of his testimony is open to reasonable questioning. Consider, first, that Clinton’s friendship with Epstein peaked in the early 2000s – right as Epstein was running his massive international child sex trafficking ring, according to the Justice Department’s indictment of Epstein, which charged criminal conduct up until 2005. Nor was this some passing relationship, some casual gladhanding of a potential donor. Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane at least 16 times, sent a warm note to Epstein on his 50th birthday in 2003, and gave a glowing quote to New York magazine for a 2002 Epstein profile. He also shows up in many photographs partying and swimming and hot-tubbing  and receiving massages while with Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and others – including women whose identities have been redacted. (Clinton testified that he did not know and did not have sex with his hot tub partner.) Yet, through it all, Clinton – Yale-trained lawyer, reputed possessor of a genius-level IQ, two-term former president – had no idea at all that anything might have been awry. Not even an “inkling.” 

Committee Democrats didn’t wait for the depositions to end before they started calling for testimony from the current president, who also had a substantial relationship with Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s. Rep. Ro Khanna announced, “A new precedent has been set in America today… Now we have the Clinton rule, which is that presidents and their families have to testify when Congress issues a subpoena, and that means that Donald Trump needs to come before our committee and explain what he knew about Epstein.” 

Of course, unlike legal precedent — which is technically binding within the courts – Congressional precedent goes only so far as whoever holds the majority (and the subpoena power) at a given moment. And if (likely when) Democrats flip the House in the 2026 midterms, they’ll hold the power to subpoena the sitting President. House Republicans, already anticipating this turnabout, have offered three reasons why Trump should not have to comply. Two of them are ridiculous; the third, less so.

Republicans claim first that Trump shouldn’t have to testify because he has already been “exonerated.” Comer gloated that Clinton “stated that he has no information that President Trump did anything wrong, and that President Trump never said anything to Clinton to make him think that he was involved with Epstein.” What on earth would Clinton know about Trump’s activities, over many years and largely or entirely outside of Clinton’s presence, with Epstein? Trump never openly admitted criminality to Clinton – so what? And even if we knew conclusively that Trump had never done anything wrong, that’s no response to a subpoena – which calls for testimony from a witness, even absent wrongdoing. (See, for example, Hillary Clinton.)

Second, Speaker Mike Johnson protested that Trump “submits to press inquiries every day.” Johnson’s response is so absurd it’s hard to tell if he actually meant it. Of course, questioning by the media doesn’t excuse anyone from testifying in an official proceeding, under oath. They’re entirely different things.

Third – and more substantially – Republicans argue that, if Democrats take the House majority after midterms in early 2027, Trump will still be the sitting president, and therefore beyond the reach of a subpoena. Indeed, the courts do give various immunities and privileges to sitting presidents that don’t necessarily accrue to former presidents. A Congressional subpoena of a sitting president plainly would present more substantial separation-of-powers issues than a subpoena of a prior president. 

But it’s not clear that Trump’s status as sitting president would shield him. In a 2020 decision, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s effort to dodge a subpoena from Manhattan’s district attorney, with conservatives John Roberts and Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh joining the liberal justices in the majority. On the other hand, that case involved a criminal grand jury subpoena, which courts tend to enforce more aggressively than Congressional subpoenas. And the District Attorney’s subpoena called only for documents, not live testimony – which would present a more substantial intrusion on the president and the executive branch.

Even if Democrats subpoena Trump in 2027 and lose an ensuing legal battle for his testimony, he’ll be out of office by early 2029. The question then, if Democrats take and hold the House, will be whether anyone still cares enough. Yes, the Epstein scandal has stayed with us for the better part of a decade now and, if anything, it’s gaining strength. But a lot can happen in two and a half years, and it’s possible we’ve already seen the apex (or nadir) of the scandal. If the public no longer cares in 2029, Congress won’t have the will to pick the fight.