House Democrats warn GOP that Bill and Hillary Clinton testimony will boomerang on them by Rebecca Beitsch and Mike Lillis - 03/01/26 6:00 AM ET by Rebecca Beitsch and Mike Lillis - 03/01/26 6:00 AM ET Share ✕ LinkedIn LinkedIn Email Email NOW PLAYING House Republicans won a political victory this week in hauling former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to testify in the case of Jeffrey Epstein. But Democrats are already warning that the extraordinary development will boomerang on the GOP whenever Democrats win back the House majority — and demand similar testimony from President Trump. There is some dispute over whether Democrats should pursue Trump’s testimony while he remains in office, or wait until afterward. But all sides are warning that the Republicans have set a precedent they might live to regret. “The door is now wide open,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.). “The people that are going to demand that we do something after what happened [with the Clintons], they’re going to have the support of people who under normal circumstances — like me — would say, ‘No, we’re going too far.’” After months of resistance that ended in a referral by the House Oversight Committee to pursue contempt charges against the Clintons, the pair was deposed Thursday and Friday. During their testimonies, both Clintons denied having had close ties with the deceased sex offender. As soon as the  deposition of Hillary Clinton  came to a close, House Oversight ranking member Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) said the episode  served as grounds  for bringing in Trump as a sitting president. “If Oversight Republicans were serious about the Epstein investigation, they would be focusing on the fact the Department of Justice has been exposed for concealing Epstein documents that have to do with President Trump being accused of sexual abuse. It’s time to bring in President Trump for testimony under oath,” Garcia said in a Thursday statement. Those calls gained intensity Friday when  the former president testified , with Democrats saying the move set the stage for bringing in Trump sooner rather than later. “A new precedent has been set in America today. Before this, we had the Trump rule. Trump defied, as all of you know, a congressional subpoena with the Jan. 6 committee. He said, ‘Presidents don’t have to testify,’” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), one of the sponsors of the act that forced the public disclosure of the Epstein files, outside of the deposition in Chappaqua, N.Y. “Now we have the Clinton rule, which is that presidents and their families have to testify when Congress issues a subpoena, and that means that Donald Trump needs to come before our committee and explain what he knew about Epstein.” Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) didn’t foreclose the possibility, but speaking to reporters Friday, Trump said he liked Bill Clinton and was “ not happy ” to see him forced to testify. “I don’t like seeing him deposed, but they certainly went after me a lot more than that,” Trump said. In subpoenaing the Clintons, Democrats say Republicans have set the stage for them to take similar actions. “Well, precedent is everything around here, so they’re creating a precedent for former presidents and former first ladies to be brought in by Congress for purposes of testimony. So there’s no turning around on that,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who would be the chair of the House Judiciary Committee if Democrats retake Congress. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) said the move sets a precedent for not only who can be brought in but how aggressively the party can pursue those who resist compliance. “Well, we take the majority, there are an unending number of things that we will want to investigate. And if Chairman Comer is setting the precedent that the exact terms of any congressional subpoena must be met or it will result in contempt, then that’s the standard we’ll use when we issue subpoenas,” he said. “I think it sets an important precedent that, if this is how the Republicans are going to approach congressional subpoenas, then we will approach them the same way.” Not all Democrats view the new opportunities as a good thing. “It’s a very bad precedent,” said Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee. “There are people here — and not necessarily myself — but there are people here who are chairmen of committees that, when they get that gavel in January, they’re going to use that precedent across the board.” “The way this place works is its escalatory behavior. One side does one thing, the other side escalates. It’s