The Clintons Are Definitely in Contempt of Congress

By Noah Rothman

Thursday, January 22, 2026

 

The usual suspects are up in arms.

 

“Absolutely NO ONE is out of bounds,” the commentator Kurt Bardella declared. The House Republicans are “obsessed,” Representative Robert Garcia exclaimed. It’s the Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election results who should be found in contempt, he added. Indeed, Bondi, too, belongs in the dock, said Representative Ro Khanna.

 

The cacophony of loud noises and agitated gesticulations notwithstanding, the effort by some Democrats to change the subject confirms what you probably already suspected: The Clintons are clearly in contempt of Congress, and that behavior invites legal consequences.

 

Don’t take the Republican House conference’s word for it. Just listen to what the Democrats who joined with the GOP in a committee vote to put Bill and Hillary Clinton in the hot seat after they defied a congressional subpoena to testify as part of a legislative panel’s inquiry into Jeffrey Epstein’s activities.

 

There is “plenty of evidence” that Bill Clinton, if not his wife, “might have information that he could share with the committee,” said Massachusetts Democrat Stephen Lynch. Sure, “leadership” might “like to defend the Clintons,” he said. And he did object to the investigatory panel’s targeting of Hillary Clinton. Still, Lynch maintained, the integrity of Congress’s investigation should come first.

 

“I voted my conscience, and I voted my district,” California Representative Lateefah Simon explained. While that sounds like a sheepish dodge, Simon reaffirmed her intention to vote for a contempt charge when the panel’s vote comes before the House.

 

New Mexico Representative Melanie Stansbury was “deeply troubled” when the Clintons “did not appear on their scheduled date.” She, too, wished to see Bondi endure congressional or even legal scrutiny, but that’s another matter.

 

“I don’t care if you’re a Democrat. I don’t care if you’re a Republican,” said Florida Representative Maxwell Frost. “I’m tired of rich people trying to evade justice and accountability, period.”

 

Frost, one of the more progressive members of the investigative panel that issued the original subpoenas, was one of several prominent progressives to turn on the Clintons. In a demonstration of the generational and ideological makeover the Democratic Party is presently undergoing, Frost was joined by Pennsylvania Representative Summer Lee, Massachusetts Representative Ayanna Pressley, and Michigan lawmaker Rashida Tlaib.

 

The vote to hold Hillary Clinton in contempt was narrower. Whereas nine Democrats voted to hold Bill Clinton in contempt, only three Democrats broke ranks to put Hillary in the dock: Lee, Stansbury, and Tlaib. It’s no coincidence that these progressive lawmakers are often at odds with the establishmentarians in their party and are, thus, bound less to institutional partisanship than to their supporters in the activist clique.

 

Irrespective of these Democrats’ motives, the case against the Clintons is cut and dried.

 

The former first family insists that the subpoenas compelling their testimony were unlawful (a claim with which many of the panel’s Democrats disagreed). Bill Clinton’s cooperation with the investigation, including an offer to provide sworn statements answering the committee’s questions, fell short of the subpoena’s demands. “Dragging your feet is not the same as noncompliance,” California Democrat Dave Min objected, “it’s not the same as contempt.” Even if we take that dubious supposition at face value, the Clintons were not merely delaying their cooperation with the committee. They seemed to believe that Congress’s subpoena power should not apply to them.

 

“There was a time when subpoenas were viewed as more than discretionary matters,” the legal scholar Jonathan Turley observed. “Counsel has insisted that the testimony is unnecessary and a distraction. However, that is not a ground that any court would view as justification for knowingly and repeatedly ignoring a lawfully issued subpoena.”

 

Maybe this episode says more about the Clintons’ depreciating political relevance than the diminished influence of partisanship or the minority party’s leaders’ capacity to keep their troops in line. Still, it is obvious and undeniable that the Clintons defied a subpoena, and it’s heartening to see congressional Democrats join with Republicans in enforcing the legislature’s prerogative.