Hillary Clinton fired back at House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer on Thursday, accusing him of altering the agreed-upon terms of her deposition in the committee's investigation into the Clintons' relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Her specific charge: that Comer demanded the depositions be filmed in addition to being transcribed, after originally agreeing they would be held behind closed doors.
Her response was not to retreat. It was to escalate.
"Let's stop the games. If you want this fight, @RepJamesComer, let's have it—in public."
Clinton posted the challenge on X, followed by a second broadside aimed squarely at Comer's stated commitment to transparency:
"You love to talk about transparency. There's nothing more transparent than a public hearing, cameras on. We will be there."
According to The Daily Mail, Hillary Clinton is scheduled to appear before the committee on February 26. Bill Clinton is set for February 27. If the former president follows through, it will mark the first time a former president has testified before Congress after being served a subpoena.
Clinton framed her outburst as righteous indignation. In a follow-up post on Thursday, she noted that for six months, she and her husband "engaged Republicans on the Oversight Committee in good faith" and "told them what we know, under oath."
The committee sees it differently. A spokesman for the House Oversight Committee responded without ambiguity:
"The Clintons are going to Clinton and try to spin the facts since no one is buying their claims. The only ones moving the goalposts are, as usual, the Clintons and their attorneys."
That line — "the Clintons are going to Clinton" — carries the weight of three decades of political muscle memory. The playbook is familiar to anyone who watched the 1990s: dispute the process, attack the investigators, reframe accountability as persecution. The fact that it's being deployed in a case involving a convicted sex offender who abused underage girls makes the theatrics land a little differently.
The Clintons initially argued that the subpoenas for their testimony were invalid. When that didn't stick, they offered to submit sworn declarations — written statements they could control, polish, and lawyer into oblivion. Only after Comer advanced contempt charges out of the House Oversight Committee last month did both Clintons agree to sit for depositions. Comer announced the agreement on Tuesday.
Now Clinton wants the cameras on. The question is whether that's a principled stand for transparency or a calculation that a public hearing gives her a better stage to perform on than a closed-door deposition gives investigators to dig.
The contempt votes told their own story. Nine Democrats out of twenty-one on the Oversight panel voted to advance contempt charges against Bill Clinton. Three Democrats joined Republicans to support contempt charges against Hillary Clinton.
Those numbers matter. This wasn't a party-line exercise. House Democratic leaders made clear they would not burn political capital rallying votes against the contempt resolutions. A younger generation of more progressive Democrats — with fewer connections to the Clinton machine and more interest in showing voters they won't shield the powerful — broke ranks.
The Clintons are discovering what happens when your political utility expires. The party that once orbited around them now treats them like a liability to be managed, not a dynasty to be protected. Bill Clinton's relationship with Epstein is well-documented through the late 1990s and early 2000s. Both Clintons have said they did not know about Epstein sexually abusing underage girls before prosecutors brought charges. But the committee wants to hear that under oath, on the record, with follow-up questions — not in a curated written statement.
Rep. Daniel Goldman, a New York Democrat, offered the most revealing response — not as a defense of the Clintons, but as a threat aimed elsewhere:
"We look forward to using this same precedent when we take back the majority in November."
Goldman's instinct is to clarify. Rather than grapple with why a former president needs to testify about his ties to a notorious sex offender, he immediately weaponized the moment as future ammunition. The substance of the investigation didn't merit a sentence. The political leverage did.
This is how Washington metabolizes accountability — not as a principle but as a tool. Goldman's statement assumes Democrats will retake the House, and when they do, former presidents should expect the same treatment. Set aside whether that's a credible threat or wishful thinking. The fact that his first response to the Clintons being compelled to testify about Epstein was partisan scorekeeping tells you everything about where his priorities sit.
Strip away the procedural noise and the social media posturing, and the core issue remains stubbornly simple. Congress wants to know what the Clintons knew about Jeffrey Epstein's crimes and when they knew it. A photograph from the William J. Clinton Presidential Library shows Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell at the Clinton White House in 1993, at an event for donors to the White House Historical Association. The relationship between Bill Clinton and Epstein continued through the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Both Clintons say they knew nothing. The committee says: prove it. Not in a press release. Not in a legal filing drafted by your attorneys. Under oath, with members of Congress asking the questions.
Hillary Clinton's fury about whether the deposition is filmed or merely transcribed is a fight about format, not substance. If you've told the truth for six months, a camera changes nothing. If you haven't, a camera changes everything.
February 26 and 27 now loom as dates with genuine political consequence. If the Clintons appear — whether in a closed deposition or the public hearing Hillary Clinton now demands — the testimony itself becomes the story. Every answer, every dodge, every invocation of privilege will be dissected. If they don't appear, contempt of Congress moves from threat to reality.
The committee has the leverage it didn't have six months ago. The contempt votes proved that even Democrats won't unanimously shield the Clintons from answering questions about a convicted sex offender. The bipartisan cracks in that wall aren't going to seal themselves.
Hillary Clinton wants this to be a story about James Comer moving goalposts. About Republican overreach. About the process. She wants the fight to be about the fight — not about what Epstein did, who knew, and who looked the other way.
The cameras she's demanding might not cooperate with that plan. Transparency cuts both ways, and once you invite the public in, you don't get to script what they see.