Epstein Accountability: The Clintons’ Charade of Transparency

The Back and Forth

Since the Justice Department released millions of documents as part of its pathetic attempt to comply with the recently passed Epstein Files Transparency Act, we have seen almost no movement to hold those individuals mentioned to account. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. Kash Patel, the FBI Director who had seen the files prior to their release, said that nothing in them could predicate investigations into uncharged third parties. More simply put, he said that all of the horrible things you might’ve seen people saying in conversation with Epstein were just words, and that no credible evidence exists in the files that Epstein and Maxwell trafficked girls to anybody but themselves. Other countries, like the U.K., seem to have immediately started to look into links between powerful Brits and Epstein.

The House of Commons interrogated Starmer during Prime Minister’s Questions on his appointment of Peter Mandelson ambassador to the United States, and Starmer admitted he knew about Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein prior to selecting him. The Metropolitan Police have opened a criminal investigation into Mandelson’s sharing of market sensitive information concerning the European Central Bank bailouts in 2008, and raided two of his properties a few days ago.¹ Starmer’s Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney, has since resigned for his role in the appointment.² The Prime Minister has also urged Prince Andrew to testify before the U.S. Congress.³

Obviously, individuals testifying about the details of their relationship with Epstein does not guarantee accountability; former presidents, journalists, high-powered lawyers, CEOs, and others mentioned in the files have all just denied that they knew anything and pointed the fingers at others mentioned in the files. That said, I have a hard time seeing the downside of hauling these people before an investigative body to see if their tone changes under oath.⁴

This brings me to the Clintons, perhaps the one notable exception to that lack of progress towards actual accountability in the United States. In July of last year, a subcommittee of House Oversight unanimously voted in favor of subpoenas for ten people: Former President Bill and Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; former FBI Directors James Comey and Robert Mueller; former Attorneys General Bill Barr, Loretta Lynch, Alberto Gonzales, Eric Holder, Jeff Sessions, and Merrick Garland; and the Justice Department itself for files related to Epstein.

The various FBI directors and attorneys general—with the exception of Bob Mueller whose subpoena the Committee withdrew due to his diagnosis of Parkinson’s⁵—all complied to some extent. Bill Barr, the attorney general in 2019 when Epstein died,⁶ ended up being the only one to sit for a full closed-door deposition. The other law enforcement officials negotiated with the Committee and ended up submitting written testimony asserting they had no special information that might advance the investigation.⁷

The Oversight Committee would not accept the same from the Clintons. Though the Committee had set a date in October for their appearance, negotiations about the nature of the testimony dragged into November. On the third of November, David Kendall—who represents the Clintons—sent a letter to the Committee saying that the Clintons should be allowed to submit written statements just as the others had. He accused the Committee of “rank partisanship,” despite the fact that the subpoenas were authorized in a bipartisan manner, and said that the Clintons “have little to contribute to that legitimate goal [of transparency], all of which can be readily submitted on paper.”⁸

Comer declined this offer in a letter and statement dated November 21, saying that even Kendall’s own letter admits the Clintons possess some relevant information, and that witnesses don’t have the right to dictate the terms of their engagement with a Congressional Committee’s lawful subpoenas.⁹

Comer then relented on new deposition dates in December, respecting the Clintons’ assertion that they had a funeral to attend. When the alternate dates rolled around in January, the Clintons skipped their appearance. They released a joint letter on Twitter that seeks to obfuscate to an immense degree.¹⁰ It came with a caption that said: “This is not about Right or Left, it’s about Right and Wrong.” The letter proceeds to bring up all the terrible things the Republicans in government have been doing, and the important topics they have neglected. The Clintons try to cast the unanimous, bipartisan subpoenas as legally invalid, and noncompliance with them as their “contribution to fighting the madness,” of Republicans. They said that they had made their decision to not appear in person, and that the ball now lies with Comer to decide whether he wanted to initiate contempt proceedings. 

The Oversight Committee voted on January 21 to recommend that the full House take up contempt proceedings against the Clintons.¹¹ Nine Democrats joined Republicans in the vote on Bill, and three Democrats joined the second vote on Hillary. After these votes in Committee, all that was left was for the full House to vote on the measure. Given that Democrats have joined Republicans so far in this quest to hear from the Clintons in person, the vote likely would have gone against the Former President and Former Secretary of State. In light of this fact, the Clintons relented just before the vote.¹² They agreed to appear for the transcribed and taped interviews that they had fought for months, and will answer questions before the Committee at the end of this month. Hillary Clinton had one last bite of the apple with a post on Twitter trying to goad Comer into changing the nature of the depositions with no success. 

Some Thoughts

I want to start out by saying that, while I’m no fan of the Clintons, I dislike James Comer about as much. I agree with the Clintons’ lawyer when he wrote that the chairman is not acting as “an impartial and dispassionate factfinder.”¹³ If he were, there would be more subpoenas going out everyday to implicated individuals, and the Committee would likely have made more of the law enforcement leaders sit for depositions—just as the Clintons said. He also did not vote for the discharge petition that forced the Epstein Files Transparency Act onto the House floor. Even the National Review, quite surprisingly, wrote that his pursuit of the Clintons is, at least in part, to “take the Epstein heat off a president whose poll numbers have declined as this year’s midterm elections beckon.” ¹⁴

That said, it seems to me that while Comer is engaging in political theater, so are the Clintons. In her last effort to prevent the closed-door hearing, she wrote: “For six months, we engaged Republicans on the Oversight Committee in good faith… They moved the goalposts and turned accountability into an exercise in distraction. Let’s stop the games. If you want this fight… let’s have it—in public. You love to talk about transparency. There’s nothing more transparent than a public hearing, cameras on.”¹⁵ While I guess she might be technically correct that public hearings are very transparent, so are taped and transcribed depositions—especially when members of the committee have committed to making footage and transcripts of the deposition public, and have promised a public hearing afterwards.¹⁶ And when you compare the relative efficacy of the two types of hearings, it isn’t even close. Open hearings are circuses, and the Clintons know that. They know that if they were to testify exclusively in public, they would likely be able to shirk the most intense questioning. It saddens me to see how many people who probably self-identify with left-of-center politics have been taken in by these flimsy attempts to point the finger of malfeasance elsewhere. 

Their desire to give their testimony—first in written format and then in public hearings—may seem like good faith negotiations to convey the information in a concise or transparent manner depending on the mode. However, it also comes off as an attempt to avoid the most revealing form of testimony. Closed-door depositions have no upper time limit, and witnesses can face rigorous cross examination. They can, of course, take the fifth—as Maxwell just did in her deposition¹⁷—or claim not to have any recollection of the questions asked. What they cannot do in this setting is give quippy comebacks for the cameras until their interrogator has run out of their allotted time as they might in a public hearing. Think about all of the Trump cabinet officials who come before Congress for public hearings and absolutely nothing constructive comes out of it besides a few clips of the various sides dunking on each other. When it comes to involvement with a pedophilic sex trafficker, I’m not interested in dunking. 

Just the other day, Sen. Andy Kim asked Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, whether or not he thought the fact that Changpeng Zhao (CZ)—the founder of crypto exchange company Binance who went to prison for enabling money laundering—had received a pardon after his company “injected billions of dollars into Trump’s family business, World Liberty Financial,” represented a conflict of interest for the President. Bessent first said that he didn’t know anything about that. Then, when asked whether it sounded like a conflict of interest by the facts presented, Bessent replied that he simply “was not going to respond to that.”¹⁸ Put plainly, public hearings are fundamentally unserious in this era.

And we should desire the most in-depth fact finding possible, not just in this case but especially in this case. We are talking about people who held some of the most powerful positions in government for years, who still loom larger-than-life in Democratic Party politics,¹⁹ and who have a well documented relationship with Epstein. Only a few days ago, the New York Times published a piece about Ghislaine Maxwell’s intimate involvement in getting the Clinton Global Initiative off the ground. Maxwell “arranged to wire $1 million to pay Publicis for its work on ‘the Clinton project… The source of the money is unclear, including whether Mr. Epstein provided the funds. However, the emails show that he was aware of the payment.” The story references more links between the Clintons, Epstein, and Maxwell: “The records reveal that Ms. Maxwell had flirtatious exchanges in the early 2000s with Doug Band, who at the time was Mr. Clinton’s top aide.” Other mentions include sizable donations to the Clintons’ campaigns for public office, donations “to help refurbish the White House,” and numerous White House visits and plane trips.²⁰ In his recommendation that Hillary Clinton be held in contempt, Comer cited yet another connection. This one, reported in Mediaite in 2020, details how “Ghislaine Maxwell’s nephew, Alexander Djerassi, worked for three years in the State Department during… Hillary Clinton’s tenure there.”²¹ We also know that prior to this, Djerassi was hired onto Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. Clinton claims that she “did not know Mr. Djerassi was Maxwell’s nephew until reading,” a subpoena she received from the Oversight Committee.²² Countless photos exist of Bill Clinton with Epstein and Maxwell. Not to mention the fact that a swirling world of conspiracies exists around this well-connected couple even in the absence of Epstein connections. 

I understand frustration from people that support these subpoenas and simply wish more were issued and enforced in this manner. I am right there with you. But this is a step in the right direction, at the very least. Perhaps it is naïve to think that they will stick to a consistent position, but there is a chance that by showing Republicans that Democrats are willing to hold their own to account, maybe it will inspire some of the same in Republicans. And in the likely event that it doesn’t, Democrats can console themselves that they don’t offer the same sycophantic protection to their own that the Republicans do.

The Legal Weight Behind the Subpoenas

I think I have established that, given the nature of the allegations and their positions relative to them, the Clintons should show up to testify. Do they have to, though? In their letters, both Kendall and the Clintons referenced how the subpoenas were ‘legally invalid,’ and the House should not seek to enforce them as such. Even if they should show up, do they have to?

The answer to me is a confident—but not unqualified—yes. While this area of case law is surprisingly thin compared to other subjects, Supreme Court precedent makes clear that the Constitution gives wide latitude to the legislature in conducting investigations connected to the law-making process. 

The Court decided Watkins v. United States in 1957.²³ The case concerned the Subcommittee of the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, a McCarthy-era tribunal meant to expose and vilify those with links to communist and socialist entities. John Watkins went before the Committee and, after refusing to answer a particular question, was convicted of a misdemeanor. The Court ended up overturning his conviction by finding that he “was not accorded a fair opportunity to determine whether he was within his rights in refusing to answer, and his conviction was invalid under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.” As a corollary to the ruling, the Court delved into the conditions of propriety for a congressional investigation. 

This case posed to the justices the challenge of striking a balance between upholding the rights of Americans who had their testimony compelled by Congress, and making sure not to place an undue fetter on a coordinate branch of government’s constitutional prerogative to uncover facts relevant to the legislative process. The Court recognized that

“the power of the Congress to conduct investigations is inherent in the legislative process. That power is broad. It encompasses inquiries concerning the administration of existing laws, as well as proposed or possibly needed statutes. It includes surveys of defects in our social, economic, or political system for the purpose of enabling the Congress to remedy them… But, broad as is this power of inquiry, it is not unlimited. There is no general authority to expose the private affairs of individuals without justification in terms of the functions of the Congress… No inquiry is an end in itself; it must be related to, and in furtherance of, a legitimate task of the Congress.”²⁴

They recognized that the calculus becomes a little more complicated when the committee seeks to compel a witness “to testify, against his will, about his beliefs, expressions or associations,” as this threatens to infringe on someone’s First Amendment rights.²⁵ In a previous case—United States v. Rumley—the Court had held that, “when First Amendment rights are threatened, the delegation to the committee must be clearly revealed in its charter.”²⁶ This posed an issue for the Un-American Activities Committee. The justices found that its delegation of authority, in the form of the Committee’s authorizing resolution, lacked the specificity “to insure that compulsory process is used only in furtherance of a legislative purpose.”²⁷

Working against that limitation, though, was the idea that “every reasonable indulgence of legality must be accorded to the actions of a coordinate branch of our Government.” The authorization of the Un-American Activities Committee—which could “radiate outward infinitely to any topic thought to be related in some way to armed insurrection,” or even “to the past to collect minutiae on remote topics, on the hypothesis that the past may reflect upon the present”—made it “impossible… to declare that the Committee has ranged beyond the area committed to it by its parent assembly, because the boundaries are so nebulous.” Such an unclear delegation of authority also creates a “wide gulf between the responsibility for the use of investigative power,” which rests with the full House of Congress, “and the actual exercise of that power.” With these principles in mind, “protected freedoms should not be placed in danger in the absence of a clear determination by the House or the Senate that a particular inquiry is justified by a specific legislative need.”²⁸

We can see a clear picture emerging from these precepts. Congress needs to have the ability to conduct investigations to execute its legislative mandate, but this power carries with it the potential for abuse. In light of this potential for abuse, but with a mind to preserving the coequal relationship of the judiciary and the legislature, Courts should hesitate in stepping into the process unless Congress is exceeding its legislative authority. The Court determines this by thinking about whether or not the committee’s authorization has any intrinsic limits. Congress therefore has a responsibility to justify its inquiries with specific legislative needs. If it satisfies this requirement, Courts should afford Congress a presumption of legality so as to not infringe on a coordinate branch of government.

Let’s step forward in time to the issue of the Clintons. The subpoenas in this instance originated in the House Oversight Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement. Let’s look at that committee’s authorization and their logic between that authorization and the Clintons. The Subcommittee’s authorization says that it “shall have oversight jurisdiction over homeland security, and criminal justice, and federal law and regulatory enforcement, and the U.S. borders and immigration.”²⁹ While undoubtedly broad, it certainly does not appear nebulous or unclear. 

The Committee made clear that its investigation—which is split up into five parts: “(i) the alleged mismanagement of the federal government’s investigation into Mr. Jeffrey Epstein and Ms. Ghislaine Maxwell, (ii) the circumstances and subsequent investigations of Mr. Epstein’s death, (iii) the operation of sex-trafficking rings and ways for the federal government to effectively combat them, (iv) ways in which Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell sought to curry favor and exercise influence to protect their illegal activities, and (v) potential violations of ethics rules related to elected officials,”—relates substantially to the Committee and Subcommittee’s authorizations.³⁰

The document recommending contempt proceedings for Secretary Clinton explained why she could provide relevant testimony to their legislative goals:

“Secretary Clinton’s testimony related to the activities of Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell and their efforts to establish relationships and curry favor with influential individuals while operating a sex-trafficking ring. In addition, given her service as Secretary of State, Secretary Clinton is in a position to provide firsthand information regarding efforts by the federal government to combat international sex trafficking. Her testimony may inform the Oversight Committee’s consideration of legislative reforms designed to combat the operation of sex-trafficking rings as well as efforts to shield them from scrutiny.”³¹

As for Former President Clinton, the Committee wrote:

“President Clinton maintained a close personal relationship with Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell for several years, and the testimony sought by the subpoena is relevant to the Oversight Committee’s investigation. In particular, President Clinton possesses firsthand information regarding the activities of Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell and their efforts to establish relationships and curry favor with influential individuals while operating a sex-trafficking ring. His testimony may inform the Oversight Committee’s consideration of legislative reforms designed to combat the operation of sex-trafficking rings, efforts to shield them from scrutiny, and ethics reforms for current and former elected officials.”³²

To me, these connections seem plausible enough to validate the subpoenas, given that Courts should grant “every reasonable indulgence of legality,” to investigatory acts of Congress. It is undoubtable that political motivations factor into the choice to bring in the Clintons—a family that has long been the target of conservative ire. But listen to the Supreme Court in Watkins once more:

“We have no doubt that there is no congressional power to expose for the sake of exposure. The public is, of course, entitled to be informed concerning the workings of its government. That cannot be inflated into a general power to expose where the predominant result can only be an invasion of the private rights of individuals. But a solution to our problem is not to be found in testing the motives of committee members for this purpose. Such is not our function. Their motives alone would not vitiate an investigation which had been instituted by a House of Congress if that assembly’s legislative purpose is being served.”³³

This seems to put it to rest. Even if the Republicans want to subpoena the Clintons for political purposes, that doesn’t actually factor into the legal analysis. If members can provide an auxiliary justification that creates a reasonable link between the subpoenas and the legislative purpose of a committee, whatever additional political motivations they may harbor don’t carry much weight. The Committee even went through legally unnecessary steps to make these subpoenas appear apolitical, and, by doing so, imported “a measure of added care,” to the exercise of their investigatory authority that the Court had recommended.³⁴ While the Committee Chairs have the authority to issue subpoenas on their own authority, the ones summoning the Clintons to deposition received unanimous support from Democrats and Republicans in the Subcommittee. At the end of the day, I think the Clintons agree with me. They agreed to be deposed just before the full House would vote on their contempt, a sign they thought their defense would not hold up.

One last point of only tangential relevance, I mentioned how maintaining the separation of powers and the coequality of the branches of government played a role in governing the Court’s decisions. Astute observers might wonder how this situation is complicated by the fact that Bill and Hillary Clinton both served in the executive branch for quite some time—the former as President and the latter as Secretary of State. 

In 2020, the Supreme Court decided a case wherein Trump had tried to stop an accounting firm from forking over his financial records in response to a congressional subpoena. The Court had a case in front of it for the first time concerning a congressional subpoena that would divulge information about a sitting U.S. President in his private capacity, introducing a whole new set of separation of powers considerations. The proceedings were complicated by the fact that “three committees sought overlapping sets of financial documents, [and] each supplied different justifications for the requests.”³⁵ Very basically, every justice agreed that Congress should be required to meet a higher standard given the precariousness of such interbranch compulsion, and the majority decided it should fall somewhere between the arguments offered by the two parties. 

Trump had contended that “the House must show that the financial information is ‘demonstrably critical’ to its legislative purpose,” while the Committees contended they only needed to show that the subpoenas “‘relate[ ] to a valid legislative purpose’ or ‘concern[ ] a subject on which legislation could be had.’” The Court said that the logic of this argument “would risk seriously impeding Congress in carrying out its responsibilities,” which include oversight over the executive.³⁶

The Court also disagreed with Congress and the rulings of lower courts who had decided that, because the subpoenas only sought information on Trump in his capacity as a private citizen, the concerns surrounding separation of powers were not salient enough to override Congress’ investigatory authority as laid out in previous cases: “Without limits on its subpoena powers, Congress could ‘exert an imperious controul’ over the Executive Branch and aggrandize itself at the President’s expense…”³⁷

To split the difference, the Court decided that Courts should review these kinds of questions with a four-part test:

“First, courts should carefully assess whether the asserted legislative purpose warrants the significant step of involving the President and his papers… Second, to narrow the scope of possible conflict between the branches, courts should insist on a subpoena no broader than reasonably necessary to support Congress’s legislative objective… Third, courts should be attentive to the nature of the evidence offered by Congress to establish that a subpoena advances a valid legislative purpose. The more detailed and substantial the evidence of Congress’s legislative purpose, the better… Fourth, courts should be careful to assess the burdens imposed on the President by a subpoena. We have held that burdens on the President’s time and attention stemming from judicial process and litigation, without more, generally do not cross constitutional lines.”³⁸

The reason why I began this digression with a caveat about Mazars‘ mere tangential relevance is because it would not apply to Hillary Clinton, who never served as president, and there is precedent in the D.C. Circuit that says explicitly that “none of those [carefully tailored balancing tests like Mazars], though, have been applied to resolve a dispute between a former President and the joint judgment of the incumbent President and the Legislative Branch.”³⁹ The opinion later stated that “those separation of powers concerns necessarily have less traction when the request is for records from a former administration, since the objecting former President no longer occupies the ‘unique position of the President.’”⁴⁰ Trump could complicate this analysis by stepping in to aid Bill Clinton’s case, but for whatever reason I doubt this will happen. 

Conclusion

To briefly sum up, the Clintons should stop stalling and acting like their calls for ‘transparent’ public hearings give them the moral high ground. Their legal arguments seem to hold no water, as the couple’s eventual assent suggests. The public should not laud the Clintons’ efforts to oppose bipartisan subpoenas seeking to investigate their pretty extensive ties to the most prolific child sex trafficker in U.S. history as part of a bigger fight against Republican overreach. As the record reflects, they have engaged in every effort to prevent meaningful scrutiny while hiding behind a veneer of upholding transparency. People who consider themselves Democrats should not fall prey to their attempts at obfuscating who is seeking—and who is fighting—for answers. I understand the inclination to criticize Comer. He’s clearly a political actor who would probably have done things quite differently had his primary motivation been getting to the bottom of the Epstein situation. That said, by a stroke of luck he has landed on the right side of this issue, and partisan blinders shouldn’t confuse anyone on this. 

1. BBC, BBC ↩︎
2. Some media outlets have said McSweeney “has taken the bullet,” for Starmer. 
   The Guardian ↩︎
3. BBC ↩︎
4. I realize that the threat of revelations into one’s relationship with a pedophilic sex trafficker probably outweigh concerns about perjury. But even if we just hear a lot of people saying I don’t remember, it still seems worth it to make them feign ignorance in an official setting. ↩︎
5. ABC ↩︎
6. An interesting tidbit of unknown relevance is that Epstein was hired to a teaching position at the prestigious Dalton School in 1974—a job for which he possessed dubious qualifications—only three months after Donald Barr, Bill Barr’s father, left his position as headmaster. Barr apparently “made it a point to hire teachers from unconventional backgrounds,” and may have hired Epstein before he left. At the school, some students “recalled observing Mr. Epstein flirting with the girls at the school.” New York Times. ↩︎
7. WGME, The Hill ↩︎
8. New York Times ↩︎
9. House Oversight Committee ↩︎
10. Twitter – Bill Clinton ↩︎
11. House Oversight Committee ↩︎
12.  House Oversight Committee ↩︎
13. New York Times ↩︎
14. The National Review ↩︎
15. Twitter – Hillary Clinton ↩︎
16. “Comer has said the closed-door depositions will be taped, and that the video and transcripts will be made public. Comer also told Newsmax that if the Clintons still wanted to testify in a public hearing after that, they would be welcome to do so.” ABC ↩︎
17. The Hill ↩︎
18. Youtube – Andy Kim Questioning Scott Bessent ↩︎
19. Bill Clinton featured prominently in Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign to questionable effect. On October 30, 2024, he held an event in Michigan—a swing state with large Arab-American communities—and thought it wise to say: “I understand why young Palestinian and Arab Americans in Michigan think too many people have died… but if you lived in one of those kibbutzim… What would you do if it was your family…” A real political savant. Youtube – Bill Clinton in Michigan ↩︎
20. New York Times ↩︎
21. Mediaite ↩︎
22. New York Times ↩︎
23. I am consciously skipping over McGrain v. Daugherty, 273 U.S. 135, (1927). In that case, the Court said that judges should assume a legislative purpose when looking at congressional investigations. They did not even need “an express avowal of the object,” such as the one present in this case. McGrain, 178. Given that one could not really construe this case as weighing in favor of the Clintons, I don’t feel a need to spend time on it. Watkins v. United States, 354 U.S. 178 (1957), on the other hand, in ruling for the witness and against Congress, could potentially be read in favor of the Clintons. In light of that, I would like to spend the bulk of my time discussing why I think it cuts in a particular direction. Similarly, I won’t discuss Barenblatt v. United States, 360 U.S. 109 (1959), in which a divided court sustained a conviction on the basis that they could not “accept the… contention that this investigation should not be deemed to have been in furtherance of a legislative purpose because the true objective of the Committee and Congress was purely ‘exposure.’” Barenblatt, 132. ↩︎
24. Watkins, 187. ↩︎
25.  It seems relevant to include a bit more of the Court’s language here: “And when forced revelations concern matters that are unorthodox, unpopular, or even hateful to the general public, the reaction in the life of the witness may be disastrous.” Watkins, 197. ↩︎
26. Watkins, 198. See also United States v. Rumley, 345 U.S. 41 (1953). ↩︎
27. “An essential premise in this situation is that the House or Senate shall have instructed the committee members on what they are to do with the power delegated to them. It is the responsibility of the Congress, in the first instance, to insure that compulsory process is used only in furtherance of a legislative purpose. That requires that the instructions to an investigating committee spell out that group’s jurisdiction and purpose with sufficient particularity. Those instructions are embodied in the authorizing resolution. That document is the committee’s charter. Broadly drafted and loosely worded, however, such resolutions can leave tremendous latitude to the discretion of the investigators. The more vague the committee’s charter is, the greater becomes the possibility that the committee’s specific actions are not in conformity with the will of the parent House of Congress.” Watkins, 201. ↩︎
28. Watkins, 204-5. ↩︎
29. House Oversight Rules ↩︎
30. Contempt Resolution – Hillary Clinton ↩︎
31. Contempt Resolution – Hillary Clinton ↩︎
32. Contempt Resolution – Bill Clinton ↩︎
33. Watkins, 200. ↩︎
34. “We are mindful of the complexities of modern government and the ample scope that must be left to Congress as the sole constitutional depository of legislative power. Equally mindful are we of the indispensable function, in the exercise of that power, of congressional investigations. The conclusions we have reached in this case will not prevent the Congress, through its committees, from obtaining the information it needs for the proper fulfillment of its role in our scheme of government. The legislature is free to determine the kinds of data that should be collected. It is only those investigations that are conducted by use of compulsory process that give rise to a need to protect the rights of individuals against illegal encroachment. That protection can be readily achieved through procedures which prevent the separation of power from responsibility and which provide the constitutional requisites of fairness for witnesses. A measure of added care on the part of the House and the Senate in authorizing the use of compulsory process and by their committees in exercising that power would suffice.” Watkins, 216. ↩︎
35. Trump v. Mazars USA, LLP, No. 19-715, slip op. at 2 (July 9, 2020). ↩︎
36. Mazars, 13-14. ↩︎
37. Mazars, 16. ↩︎
38. Mazars, 20. ↩︎
39. Trump v. Thompson, No. 21-5254, at 22 (D.C. Cir. Dec. 9, 2021). ↩︎
40. Thompson, 53. ↩︎