WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton agreed late Monday to testify in a House investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, but the Republican leading the probe said an agreement had not yet been finalized.

Rep. James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, continued to press for criminal contempt of Congress charges against both Clintons Monday evening for defying a congressional subpoena when attorneys for the Clintons emailed staff for the Oversight panel, saying the pair would accept Comer’s demands and “will appear for depositions on mutually agreeable dates.”

The attorneys requested that Comer, a Kentucky Republican, agree not to move forward with the contempt proceedings. Comer, however, said he was not immediately dropping the charges, which would carry the threat of a substantial fine and even incarceration if passed by the House and successfully prosecuted by the Department of Justice.

“We don’t have anything in writing,” Comer told reporters, adding that he was open to accepting the Clintons’ offer but “it depends on what they say.”

The last-minute negotiating came as Republican leaders were advancing the contempt resolution through the House Rules Committee — a final hurdle before it headed to the House floor for a vote. It was potentially a grave moment for Congress, the first time it could hold a former president in contempt and advance the threat of prison time.

As Comer and the Clintons negotiated over the terms of the depositions, the House Rules Committee postponed advancing the contempt of Congress resolutions.

Comer earlier Monday rejected an offer from attorneys for the Clintons to have Bill Clinton conduct a transcribed interview and Hillary Clinton submit a sworn declaration. He insisted that both Clintons sit for sworn depositions before the committee in order to fulfill the panel’s subpoenas.

A letter from the committee to attorneys for the Clintons indicated that they had offered for Bill Clinton to conduct a 4-hour transcribed interview on “matters related to the investigations and prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein” and for Hillary Clinton to submit a sworn declaration.

“The Clintons do not get to dictate the terms of lawful subpoenas,” Comer said.

The former president and secretary of state had resisted the subpoenas for months after the Oversight panel issued subpoenas for their testimony in August as it opened an investigation into Epstein and his associates. Their attorneys had tried to argue against the validity of the subpoena.

However, as Comer threatened to begin contempt of Congress proceedings, the Clintons started negotiating towards a compromise. The Republican-controlled Oversight committee advanced criminal contempt of Congress charges last month. Nine of the committee’s 21 Democrats joined Republicans in support of the charges against Bill Clinton as they argued for full transparency in the Epstein investigation. Three Democrats also supported advancing the charges against Hillary Clinton.

Republicans push Bill Clinton’s involvement

Bill Clinton’s relationship with Epstein has reemerged as a focal point for Republicans amid the push for a reckoning over Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 in a New York jail cell as he faced sex trafficking charges.

Clinton, like a bevy of other high-powered men, had a well-documented relationship with Epstein in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He has not been accused of wrongdoing in his interactions with the late financier.

The Clintons have remained highly critical of Comer’s decision, saying he was bringing politics into the investigation while failing to hold the Trump administration accountable for delays in producing the Department of Justice’s case files on Epstein.

“They negotiated in good faith. You did not,” a spokesperson for the Clintons, Angel Ureña, said in response to Comer’s threats on Monday. “They told you under oath what they know, but you don’t care.”

Still, the prospect of a vote raised the potential for Congress to use one of its most severe punishments against a former president for the first time. Historically, Congress has given deference to former presidents. None has ever been forced to testify before lawmakers, although a few have voluntarily done so.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said earlier Monday that his caucus would have a discussion on the contempt resolutions later in the week but remained noncommittal on whipping votes against them.

Jeffries said he was a “hard no” on contempt and accused Comer of focusing on political retribution rather than investigating the delayed release of case files. Democrats also say the Justice Department has not yet released all the material it has on the late financier.

“They don’t want a serious interview, they want a charade,” Jeffries said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A top Justice Department official played down the possibility of additional criminal charges arising from the Jeffrey Epstein files, saying Sunday that the existence of “horrible photographs” and troubling email correspondence does not “allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody.”

Department officials said over the summer that a review of Epstein-related records did not establish a basis for new criminal investigations, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said that position remains unchanged even as a massive document dump since Friday has focused fresh attention on Epstein’s links to powerful individuals around the world and revived questions about what, if any, knowledge the wealthy financier’s associates had about his crimes.

“There’s a lot of correspondence. There’s a lot of emails. There’s a lot of photographs. There’s a lot of horrible photographs that appear to be taken by Mr. Epstein or people around him,” Blanche said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But that doesn’t allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody.”

He said victims of Epstein’s sex abuse “want to be made whole,” but that “doesn’t mean we can just create evidence or that we can just kind of come up with a case that isn’t there.”

President Donald Trump’s Justice Department said Friday that it would be releasing more than 3 million pages of documents and more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images under a law intended to reveal most of the material it collected during long-running investigations into Epstein.

The fallout from the release of the files has been swift.

In the United Kingdom, Lord Peter Mandelson announced his resignation from the governing Labour Party on Sunday following further revelations about his relationship with Epstein. He said he was stepping aside to avoid causing “further embarrassment,” even as he denied allegations he had received payments from Epstein two decades ago.

A top official in Slovakia, meanwhile, left his position after photos and emails revealed he had met with Epstein in the years after Epstein was released from jail. And British Prime Minister Keir Starmer suggested that longtime Epstein friend Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, should tell U.S. investigators whatever he knows about Epstein’s activities.

The revelations continue

The files posted to the department’s website included documents involving Epstein’s friendship with Mountbatten-Windsor, along with Epstein’s email correspondence with onetime Trump adviser Steve Bannon, New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch and other prominent contacts with people in political, business and philanthropic circles, such as billionaires Bill Gates and Elon Musk.

The Epstein saga has long fueled public fascination in part because of his past friendships with Trump and former President Bill Clinton. Both men have said they had no knowledge Epstein was abusing underage girls.

Among the records was a spreadsheet created last August that summarized calls made to the FBI’s National Threat Operation Center or to a hotline set up by prosecutors from people claiming to have some knowledge of wrongdoing by Trump. That document included a range of uncorroborated stories involving different celebrities, and somewhat fantastical scenarios, occasionally with notations indicating what follow-up, if any, was done by agents.

Blanche said Sunday that there were a “ton of people” named in the files besides Trump and that the FBI had fielded “hundreds of calls” about prominent individuals where the allegations were “quickly determined to not be credible.”

Some of Epstein’s personal email correspondence contained candid discussions with others about his penchant for paying women for sex, even after he served jail time for soliciting an underage prostitute. Epstein killed himself in a New York jail in August 2019, a month after being indicted on federal sex trafficking charges.

In one 2013 email, a person whose name was blacked out wrote to Epstein about his choice “to surround yourself with these young women in a capacity that bleeds — perhaps, somewhat arbitrarily — from the professional into the personal and back.”

“Though these women are young, they are not too young to know that they are making a very particular choice in taking on this role with you,” the person wrote. “Especially in the aftermath of your trial which, after all, was public and could be — indeed was — interpreted as a powerful man taking advantage of powerless young women, instead of the other way around.”

In a 2009 email, not long after Epstein had finished serving jail time for his Florida sex crime, another woman, whose name was redacted, excoriated him for breaking a promise that they would spend time alone together and try to conceive a baby.

“I find myself having to question every agreement we have made (no prostitutes staying in the house, in our bed, movies, naps, two weeks Alone, baby…),” She wrote. “Your last minute suggestion to spend THIS weekend with prostitutes is just too much for me to handle. I can’t live like this anymore.”

‘This review is over’

Blanche said in a separate appearance on ABC’s “This Week” that though there are a “small number of documents” the Justice Department was waiting for a judge’s approval before it can release, when it comes to the department’s own scouring of documents, “this review is over.”

“We reviewed over six million pieces of paper, thousands of videos, tens of thousands of images,” Blanche said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he believed the Justice Department was complying with the law requiring disclosure of the files.

But Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., a co-sponsor of the law, said he did not believe the department had fully complied. He said survivors were upset some of their names had inadvertently come out without redactions.

Blanche said each time the department has learned a victim’s name was not properly redacted, it has moved quickly to fix the problem and that those mistakes account for a tiny fraction of the overall materials.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats and the White House struck a deal to avert a partial government shutdown and temporarily fund the Department of Homeland Security as they consider new restrictions for President Donald Trump’s surge of immigration enforcement. But passage was delayed late Thursday as leaders scrambled to win enough support for the agreement before the midnight Friday deadline.

As the country reels from the deaths of two protesters at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis, the White House agreed to separate homeland security funding from a larger spending bill and fund the department for two weeks while they debate Democratic demands for curbs on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

“Republicans and Democrats have come together to get the vast majority of the government funded until September” while extending current funding for Homeland Security, Trump said in a social media post Thursday evening. He encouraged members of both parties to cast a “much needed Bipartisan ‘YES’ vote.”

Still, all senators weren’t yet on board. Leaving the Capitol just before midnight Thursday after hours of negotiations, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said there were “snags on both sides” as he and Democratic leader Chuck Schumer tried to rally support.

“Hopefully people will be of the spirit to try and get this done tomorrow,” Thune said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said late Thursday that he was one of the senators objecting. He said Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were being treated unfairly. He has also opposed House language that would repeal a new law that gives senators the ability to sue the government for millions of dollars if their personal or office data is accessed without their knowledge.

Democrats had requested the two-week extension and say they are prepared to block the wide-ranging spending bill if their demands aren’t met, denying Republicans the votes they need to pass it and potentially triggering a shutdown.

Rare bipartisan talks

The rare bipartisan talks between Trump and his frequent adversary, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, came after the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minnesota over the weekend and calls by senators in both parties for a full investigation. Schumer called it “a moment of truth.”

“The American people support law enforcement. They support border security. They do not support ICE terrorizing our streets and killing American citizens,” Schumer said.

The standoff has threatened to plunge the country into another shutdown, just two months after Democrats blocked a spending bill over expiring federal health care subsidies. That dispute closed the government for 43 days as Republicans refused to negotiate.

That shutdown ended when a small group of moderate Democrats broke away to strike a deal with Republicans, but Democrats are more unified this time after the fatal shootings of Pretti and Renee Good by federal agents.

Democrats lay out demands

Democrats have laid out several demands, asking the White House to “end roving patrols” in cities and coordinate with local law enforcement on immigration arrests, including requiring tighter rules for warrants.

They also want an enforceable code of conduct so agents are held accountable when they violate rules. Schumer said agents should be required to have “masks off, body cameras on” and carry proper identification, as is common practice in most law enforcement agencies.

The Democratic caucus is united in those “common sense reforms,” and the burden is on Republicans to accept them, Schumer said.

“Boil it all down, what we are talking about is that these lawless ICE agents should be following the same rules that your local police department does,” said Democratic Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota. “There has to be accountability.”

Earlier on Thursday, Tom Homan, the president’s border czar, stated during a press conference in Minneapolis that federal immigration officials are developing a plan to reduce the number of agents in Minnesota, but this would depend on cooperation from state authorities.

Still far apart on policy

Negotiations down the road on a final agreement on the Homeland Security bill are likely to be difficult.

Democrats want Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown to end. “If the Trump administration resists reforms, we shut down the agency,” said Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal.

“We need to take a stand,” he said.

But Republicans are unlikely to agree to all of the Democrats’ demands.

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis said he is opposed to requiring immigration enforcement officers to show their faces, even as he blamed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for decisions that he said are “tarnishing” the agency’s reputation.

“You know, there’s a lot of vicious people out there, and they’ll take a picture of your face, and the next thing you know, your children or your wife or your husband are being threatened at home,” Tillis said.

South Carolina Sen. Graham said some of the Democratic proposals “make sense,” such as better training and body cameras. Still, he said he was putting his Senate colleagues “on notice” that if Democrats try to make changes to the funding bill, he would insist on new language preventing local governments from resisting the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

“I think the best legislative solution for our country would be to adopt some of these reforms to ICE and Border Patrol,” Graham posted on X. But he said that the bill should also end so-called “sanctuary city” policies.

Uncertainty in the House

Across the Capitol, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told The Associated Press on Thursday that he had been “vehemently opposed” to breaking up the funding package, but “if it is broken up, we will have to move it as quickly as possible. We can’t have the government shut down.”

On Thursday evening, at a premiere of a movie about first lady Melania Trump at the Kennedy Center, Johnson said he might have some “tough decisions” to make about when to bring the House back to Washington to approve the bills separated by the Senate, if they pass.

“We’ll see what they do,” Johnson said.

House Republicans have said they do not want any changes to the bill they passed last week. In a letter to Trump on Tuesday, the conservative House Freedom Caucus wrote that its members stand with the Republican president and ICE.

“The package will not come back through the House without funding for the Department of Homeland Security,” they wrote.