In another sign that American politics is trapped in the Upside Down, last week a rogue band of House Democrats voted to hold Bill and Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress.
It was a bit of a surprise turn in these hyper-polarized times. The charges stem from the Clintons’ refusal to testify behind closed doors before the House Oversight Committee in its investigation of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
On Jan. 13, just hours before Bill Clinton’s deadline to appear before the committee, the Clintons sent letters to its chair, James Comer, decrying their treatment and defying their subpoenas. The committee voted to recommend contempt charges to the full House the next week. Nine of the panel’s 21 Democrats joined Republicans to pass the measure against Clinton. Three supported the one against Hillary Clinton as well.
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I feel the leadership’s angst. And the Clintons’ reluctance is understandable. Comer’s investigation has been geared primarily toward shifting the heat off President Donald Trump, a former pal of Epstein’s, and onto prominent Democrats with past ties to the disgraced financier. But to the rebel Dems, I say: Way to go!
Yes, their contempt votes are politically ticklish. And of course Comer is bending the oversight process to deflect the Epstein focus from Trump. These are dark times, dominated by a morally bankrupt president. But as the Democrats work to regain the public’s trust and to she their image as the party of elites, they cannot be seen as treating elites in their party as above the law. Especially with a scandal about sexual abuse. Even more especially when the situation involves Bill Clinton, whose own licentiousness has haunted the party for over three decades. (Both Trump and Clinton have denied any knowledge of Epstein’s purported sex trafficking of young women and underage girls.)
Several of the Democrats who backed the contempt measures are on the younger side (grading on the congressional curve, of course), including Reps. Summer Lee, Emily Randall and Maxwell Frost. Among the party’s rising generations, there is little lingering nostalgia for the Clinton era or the Clintons personally. Far from it. Many are itching for their party to embrace fresh values, fresh blood and a fresh start.
Refusing to get drawn into this showdown is a good step toward helping Democrats at last turn the page on Bill and Hillary, who for many in the party wore out their welcome long ago.
With their votes, the nine outliers denied Republicans an easy line of attack about how Dems don’t give a flip about truth, justice and decency when one of their own blah, blah, blah. The vote also drew a stark moral line between their caucus and a GOP that recognizes no higher principle than covering the current president’s backside.
It’s no secret that Trump needs a shiny distraction in the Epstein scandal. When the oversight committee released a batch of documents from Epstein’s estate in November, the president responded by ordering the Justice Department to dig for Epstein dirt on Bill Clinton and other Democrats. Pam Bondi, the attorney general, jumped right on that, despite her department’s having previously asserted that the scandal merited no further investigation. And despite her current slothlike release of the existing files.
‘What about Bill?’
Comer’s subpoenaing of the Clintons, especially of Hillary Clinton, feels equally noxious and desperate. It also seems based partly on the calculation that Democrats would feel compelled to blindly circle the wagons around their team’s VIPs, as Republicans so often do around Trump.
But the 2020s are not the 1990s, and Democrats long ago learned the price of protecting a self-indulgent leader from the repercussions of his bad behavior. “But what about Bill Clinton!” has for too long been the GOP’s stock answer when a sex scandal rocks its ranks. Trump himself has repeatedly brandished Bill Clinton’s sexual misconduct as a way to distract from his own. In 2016, Trump even invited multiple women who had accused Clinton of sexual abuse to attend one of his debates against Hillary Clinton. It was a gross — and brilliant — stunt aimed at undermining whatever moral high ground Hillary Clinton hoped to occupy.
Bill Clinton insists he has nothing to hide regarding Epstein. Yay for him. But not even a former president can defy a subpoena — issued with bipartisan approval, mind you — because he and his wife consider it unfair. Clinton had a relationship with Epstein. He owes the American people answers, even if he does not get to dictate the terms of disclosure.
The best outcome now is for the Clintons to feel newly motivated to work out a deal with the committee and short-circuit a House vote on contempt. Barring that, the entire Democratic caucus may soon need to take a position on this mess. If so, Democrats should take a deep breath, and make clear that they are on the side of transparency, accountability and the law, no matter who is in the hot seat.
Then they should double down on pummeling Comer and other Trump enablers for continuing to drag American politics down the rabbit hole toward nihilism.
Michelle Cottle is a New York Times columnist.
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