Bill and Hillary Clinton have been ordered to testify in front of Congress as part of an investigation into the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas on Tuesday to the former United States president, 78, and first lady, 77, as well as eight other individuals.
James Comer, 52, the committee’s Republican chairman, requested depositions from the Clintons after Donald Trump, 79, failed to release more federal files on the disgraced financier.
The letter to Mr Clinton details his ties to Epstein, who died in a New York prison in 2019 aged 66, including his close relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell, 63.
Maxwell, Epstein’s ex-girlfriend, is serving a 20-year sentence in a Texas jail for sex trafficking.
“By your own admission, you flew on Jeffrey Epstein’s private plane four separate times in 2002 and 2003,” Mr Comer’s letter states.
“During one of these trips, you were even pictured receiving a ‘massage’ from one of Mr Epstein’s victims.”
The Republican-held committee ordered former US secretary of state Mrs Clinton to appear for a deposition on October 9 and her husband on October 14.
“Your family appears to have had a close relationship with both Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell,” it wrote in a letter to Mrs Clinton.
The letter to Mr Clinton references allegations made by Virginia Giuffre, Epstein’s most high-profile victim who died in a car crash in Australia earlier this year, that he attempted to kill a story about the billionaire.
“It has also been claimed that you pressured Vanity Fair not to publish sex trafficking allegations against your ‘good friend’ Mr Epstein and there are conflicting reports about whether you ever visited Mr Epstein’s island,” it says.
Mr Trump has been under pressure from Democrats and Republicans to release the Epstien files amid long-running theories that the financier was murdered in his cell to protect a cabal of abusers.
However, the president has repeatedly denied any prior knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and cut off their relationship before allegations surfaced.
The committee had already issued a subpoena for Maxwell, as well as several former attorneys generals and directors of the FBI.
