Make no mistake, Donald Trump has put the Clintons on trial

It is 25 years since there was a Clinton in the White House, yet the diehard Democrat power couple still have a habit of ending up in the headlines. The release of the Epstein files has induced Bill and Hillary to testify in an investigation in Congress. That milestone marks a stinging defeat for a couple who, only a month ago, were furiously presenting their refusal to testify as a striking counter-blow against the manipulation of the justice system in the Maga era.The Clintons semi-royal political style always has a tendency to conflate their own interests with the national story: “Every person has to decide when they have seen or had enough and are ready to fight for this country, its principles and its people, no matter the consequences,” they wrote in a lengthy letter to James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, explaining early reluctance to testify before a staunchly Republican chair and several other members close to Trump. “For us, now is that time.”And yet here we are – Hillary will appear by remote link to the committee today, and her husband tomorrow. Her opening statement, which she shared on social media, said she “had no idea” of Epstein’s crimes and called for Trump to be questioned. The enmity between Hillary, in particular, and Trump also runs deeply personally. In 2016, she saw her dream of becoming the first female president and cementing a dynastic grip on American power dissolve under the barrage of the Trump campaign that upended US politics. A no-holds-barred campaign showed her struggling to shake off a snobbish comment about Trump supporters being a “basket of deplorables” with extremist views, while the Trump campaign leveraged conspiracy theories and attacks on “crooked Hillary” in a campaign that ended in her defeat.As I wrote at the time, that race “was Hillary Clinton’s to lose – and she lost it”. To end up in another tussle in front of the public gaze at the behest of her nemesis, who has returned to the White House she coveted, must cut deep. Certainly, the attempt to have a couple on whom Donald Trump has long fixated, seeing them as the incarnation of the progressive internationalism he despises, answering invasive questions about any personal or institutional dealings with the convicted sex offender is political catnip to Maga Republicans.But it is also a sign that the Clintons no longer get things all of their own way. The Democratic Party, whose senior ranks were initially divided about supporting the Clintons’ opposition to giving testimony, has thrown its weight behind greater transparency as the horrors of the Epstein files emerged, and scalps have accumulated in Britain and beyond. Now, Democrat members of the Oversight Committee are keen to say that they do not intend to ask “softball” questions of the duo.So far, Hillary Clinton has been adamant that she has no personal dealings with Epstein at all, while Bill Clinton has stuck to a well-trodden tale that his only involvement with the late sex abuser and traffickers was via donations for charities and taking flights from him as a donor to such causes. He will emphasise that he cut off contact with Epstein before his benefactor was convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2009.But the suggestion that dealings with Epstein were not purely official is not helped by the release of pictures apparently showing the former president relaxing in a jacuzzi swimming pool alongside Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s enabler in procuring sexual services, now serving a long prison sentence for her role in supporting his crimes.Nothing released in the files incriminates the former president or suggests illegal activity. But the public ire over the contents release means that the Clintons have ended up where they least wanted to be – in the sights of a Republican movement that wants to pin a bleak association with Epstein on wealthy Democrats and move on from awkward questions about the late paedophile’s previous friendship with Donald Trump. For the Clintons, now both in their 70s and still actively engaged in their “Global Initiatives” across continents, this is a fight for their legacy and reputation. They remain lionised by centre-leftists recalling the good parts of his leadership – transatlantic relations, personal charisma and electability. His downsides have been whitewashed by admirers – his power-exploitative behaviour to younger women, Monica Lewinsky and others before her, would not now be so lightly excused as it was at the time, nor would previous accusations going back to his time as governor in Arkansas. Nor would Hillary’s tendency to downgrade these matters as mere personal inconveniences be shrugged off.The entanglement of massively wealthy donors, supporting a wide range of global projects via the Clinton Foundation is also under scrutiny as the dramatic fallout from the release of the Epstein files (or at least the parts the US Department of Justice permits to be published) has brought the longstanding Clinton method of seeking to combine rich-world connections with progressive causes centre stage.A couple used to setting the terms of debate have been forced into speaking by remote link to a committee to exonerate themselves. That is a reversal they were reluctant to make – and did so only after Congress toughened its stance, with a possible bipartisan vote that could hold them as being in contempt of the process. The initial reluctance to testify was an understandable reaction to a disclosure process driven by the Trump administration. But politics has moved on. Democrats need new models to advance their cause. In the present maelstrom, in which senior transatlantic figures, including today the head of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Borge Brende and Harvard president Larry Summers, have resigned public roles for having links to Epstein, the political power duo’s aversion to opening up about a connection to donations from Epstein to campaign in the 1990s looked avoidant.Even this appearance has been subject to last-minute hard bargaining to avoid the unwelcome impression that this hearing is really about putting the Clintons “on trial”. Two lawyers retained by the couple will be in attendance, with a research back-up team, and the depositions will be taken from their home in upstate New York – beginning with Hillary on Thursday and her husband on Friday. That too has been a fraught negotiation – there has always been ambiguity in the Clintons’ communications about whether they are in essence the “First couple” of yore or separate entities. Their legal teams were adamant that they should not appear together. “It would look like the Macbeths were on trial,” says one former campaign aide. “And that is exactly what Trump wants.” The Clintons can play politics too, however, and have driven their own bargain as to the areas the House Oversight Committee can explore in an agreement on the terms of taking part. They will raise “alleged mismanagement of the federal government’s investigation into Epstein and Maxwell” (code for Trump’s selective and partisan approach) and be asked about ways the federal government could better combat sex-trafficking rings.But there is a danger zone: how Epstein and Maxwell curried favour to protect themselves from enquiry into their dark deeds – and why so many smart and powerful people failed to notice, or chose not to notice, that anything was amiss. That really does put an entire system of power, networks and evasions on trial, by no means only or mainly the Clintons, but now inescapably including them.Anne McElvoy is co-host of Politics at Sam and Anne’s podcast at Politico