A powerful Republican-led congressional committee announced Tuesday that it had subpoenaed former Democratic President Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as part of its parliamentary investigation into the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein case.

While Donald Trump has been accused for several weeks, even by his electoral base, of a lack of transparency in the case of this financier who died in prison before his trial for sex crimes, Republican leader James Comer declared that he had summoned the former president on October 14, and the former head of American diplomacy on October 9, to answer for their links with Jeffrey Epstein.

Six former justice ministers and two former heads of the federal police, the FBI, have also been subpoenaed for hearings from mid-August to mid-October on the conduct of the judicial investigation into the financier.

"By your own admission, you traveled on Jeffrey Epstein's private plane four times in 2002 and 2003," states the letter to Bill Clinton from James Comer, head of the powerful House Oversight Committee.

It was not immediately clear whether the Clintons would comply with the subpoena.

The death of Jeffrey Epstein, found hanged in his New York cell on August 10, 2019, ahead of his sex crimes trial, has fueled countless conspiracy theories that he was murdered to cover up a scandal that has engulfed high-profile figures.

- Controversy -

Donald Trump, who during his campaign promised his base sensational revelations on this matter, is facing a backlash, including among his most fervent supporters, after his administration announced in early July that it had discovered no new evidence that would justify the publication of additional documents.

Since then, the White House has been trying to put an end to the controversy.

To this end, the number two at the Department of Justice, Todd Blanche, former personal lawyer of Donald Trump, went at the end of July to the Florida prison where Ghislaine Maxwell, ex-partner and accomplice of Jeffrey Epstein, was incarcerated, in order to question her for a day and a half.

The former New York socialite was then transferred to a prison with less strict conditions in Texas, a decision condemned by Democrats who accused the Trump administration of granting favors to the woman convicted of sexual exploitation.

A Jeffrey Epstein-like figure of the New York jet set in the 1990s and 2000s, Donald Trump has reignited debates about the nature of his own relationship with the financier by providing a new version of their breakup in the 2000s.

Aboard the presidential plane Air Force One, the Republican billionaire claimed in late July that the dispute concerned employees of his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, whom Jeffrey Epstein had allegedly "taken."

The White House has maintained until now that Donald Trump had kicked the financier out of his club about twenty years ago, after having been very close to him, for having "behaved like a crook."

The American media, for their part, have mentioned a rivalry over the acquisition of real estate in Florida.