Bill Clinton will testify about Epstein. His former inquisitor Ken Starr never had to

Bill Clinton on Friday will be the first former president in living memory to appear before a congressional committee in what can be described as an adversarial interview.

But he’s no stranger to precedent-setting testimony.

Clinton, 79, is set to give a closed-door deposition on “matters related to the investigations and prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein” from his Chappaqua, N.Y., hometown. The Republican-led House oversight committee on Thursday was questioning his wife, Hillary, on the same topic.

Since the Second World War, Harry Truman and Gerald Ford have been the only ex-presidents to testify before a congressional committee, on less provocative grounds — Truman to discuss the United Nations charter on its 10th anniversary and Ford to discuss the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution.

Clinton has denied any wrongdoing, or knowledge of Epstein’s criminal behaviour during their relationship. While Clinton’s representatives say he flew on Epstein’s private plane four times, other reports suggest a larger number — something that could very well be probed in Friday’s questioning.

Clinton has previously said there was no contact between them after 2005, but has never publicly stated why.

“There are two types of people here. The first group knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light. The second group continued relationships with him after. We’re in the first,” said Angel Urena, longtime spokesperson for the former president, in a December social media post.

In one of the great ironies to emerge since files have been released due to the Epstein Transparency Act, the independent counsel in the 1990s who investigated Clinton, Kenneth Starr, appears to have had a longer-lasting relationship with the late, convicted sex offender Epstein.

Impeachment, then a deal to avoid indictment

Clinton was U.S. president for the bulk of the 1990s, and during his two terms he testified under oath a handful of times in scenarios that brought potential legal and reputational harm.

Many presidents have avoided such an occurrence, while Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump only submitted written answers under oath — Reagan in an Iran-Contra affair inquiry and Trump related to questions about his 2016 campaign team and contacts with Russia.

Clinton dug himself into peril in January 1998, and toward the first presidential impeachment in 130 years, when he denied having sexual relations with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky while being deposed in the civil lawsuit filed by Paula Jones. Jones had alleged Clinton exposed himself to her at a hotel years earlier when he was governor.

Lewinsky, separately, denied a sexual relationship with Clinton in an affidavit in the Jones case. After reaching an immunity deal with Starr’s team, she testified there were nine sexual encounters with the president, none that included intercourse.

Clinton faced a grand jury panel on Aug. 17, 1998. House Republicans, building off of a report later filed by Starr, cited what they viewed to be three misleading statements Clinton gave that day about the nature of the Lewinsky relationship as forming the basis for a charge of perjury in his December impeachment trial.

The Senate would ultimately acquit Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, but he had to strike a deal with Starr’s successor as prosecutor to avoid being the first president to be criminally indicted.

‘Jeffrey’s otherwise magnificent life’

During the late 1990s, Clinton and Starr were often contrasted in media coverage — Clinton as a charismatic lifelong elected official who faced a number of stories alleging womanizing or sexual harassment, and Starr as a sometimes awkward public presence who was a jurist and devout Christian who taught Sunday school.

Starr’s relationship with Epstein has so far been revealed to be more circumspect than Clinton’s, but correspondence between the two men continued through 2018.

According to Clinton’s statement to this point, his in-person contact with Epstein was largely between 2001 and 2003.

In a photo recently released by the Justice Department as part of requirements of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, Clinton is shown with others, including Epstein collaborator Ghislaine Maxwell in a hot tub. The date and circumstances are not known, though Clinton has admitted in the past to visiting Epstein’s New York property.

Maxwell attended the 2010 wedding of Chelsea Clinton, the president’s daughter. The previous year, the British socialite was first publicly mentioned as a person who may have procured girls for Epstein, though that media coverage was limited to Palm Beach, Fla., newspapers at a time before social media and #MeToo boosted local stories about sexual misconduct.

Maxwell’s name was mentioned due to a 2009 civil suit settlement Epstein had reached with a Jane Doe victim, now known years later to be the late Virginia Roberts Giuffre. Maxwell would be convicted on federal sex trafficking charges and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022.

Starr, a former federal judge, was among the highly credentialled legal representatives Epstein called on when he faced criminal consequences in Florida in 2007. Epstein would agreed to state charges the next year of procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute, resulting in a 18-month jail sentence that saw him secure a non-prosecution agreement on federal charges.

Starr, newly released emails reveal, mocked media coverage portraying it as a sweetheart deal. In a May 2018 email to Epstein, also shared with lawyer Alan Dershowitz and author Michael Wolff, Starr wrote, “Jeffrey was subjected to an unprecedented federal intrusion into a quintessentially local criminal matter in South Florida.”

In another email, Starr writes that Epstein had “paid his debt to society.”

“In the spirit of the bedrock American belief in second chances, that unhappy chapter in Jeffrey’s otherwise magnificent life should be allowed to close once and for all,” Starr writes.

Signoffs from Starr to Epstein in their one-on-one correspondence included phrases like “Love ya” and “Yuletide hugs.”

Photos exist of the two men, and Starr refers to Epstein visiting him at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, in 2012, four years before he resigned as that school’s chancellor after the institution was found to have not properly responded to some allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault committed by Baylor football players.

Epstein died by suicide in 2019 in a Manhattan jail while waiting a federal prosecution, and Starr died three years later from undisclosed surgery complications after a prolonged hospital stay.

Democrats question need for hearing

Democrats have accused the committee led by Republican James Comer of only being interested in shaming the Clintons, after he threatened to hold the couple in contempt if they didn’t meet the panel. Many of them believe Howard Lutnick, Trump’s current commerce secretary, should testify about his Epstein relationship and the conflicting statements he’s made about its end.

Lutnick has confirmed visiting Epstein’s private Caribbean island with his family, while there has yet to be evidence offered that Bill Clinton visited the island.

Comer on Thursday didn’t reject that possibility, when questioned by a reporter about Lutnick. Comer also pointed out that several Democrats voted in favour of summoning the Clintons.

“I want to remind everyone, we’ve already brought in Alex Acosta and William Barr for deposition. That’s two Republicans in the [first] Trump administration,” said Comer. Acosta and Barr, however, are not accused of ties to Epstein, but rather, may have knowledge of attempts to prosecute him.

Democrats also want to know, after some personally viewed the files at the Justice Department, why Trump’s name was redacted in some cases from the publicly released files.

The Democrats are hoping to retake the House in November’s midterm elections. If so, they could make things even more uncomfortable for Trump, perhaps calling witnesses who knew both the current president and Epstein.

Trump appearing before the committee seems unlikely, but there is precedent — Gerald Ford while president gave unsworn testimony to Congress to justify his pardon of his disgraced Republican predecessor, Richard Nixon.