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The walls are closing in -- on Bill Clinton.

The former president and practiced political escape artist is on the verge of being held in contempt of Congress.

This time, the Democrat party, which stuck with him during his scandal-plagued 1992 campaign and during his 1998 impeachment, isn't rallying to him in unison.

The Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee just voted 34-8 to hold Bill Clinton in contempt for ignoring a congressional subpoena regarding the Epstein scandal, with 9 Democrats voting in favor, 8 voting against and 2 abstaining.

In other words, fascinatingly, only a minority of the committee's Democrats stood by Clinton.

The committee also voted to hold Hillary, who defied a subpoena, as well, in contempt, but by a narrower margin. Only three Democrats went along with the Republicans, a rare instance of Hillary being a better vote-getter than her husband.

The measure will now go to the full House, and is expected to pass with some Democrats defecting again to vote with Republicans. After that, the matter will be referred to the Justice Department for potential prosecution. And it beggars belief that Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has tried to make much more attenuated cases against other Trump enemies, will look the other way when there's an open-and-shut case that Bill and Hillary are guilty of contempt, an offense punishable by up to a year in jail.

Ten years after Republicans routinely chanted, "Lock her up," and were thrilled by Trump telling Hillary during a debate that he'd put her in jail, they could well see a serious indictment of Hillary Clinton.

All good things, they may be tempted to think, come to those who wait.

Now, Bill Clinton claims, as is his wont, that he's the victim. He complains that the committee wouldn't take "yes" for an answer when he offered his testimony with conditions. But according to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, Clinton agreed only to speak to him and the ranking Democratic members and with no recorded transcript.

Comer, understandably, found that inadequate.

Clinton insists that the subpoena has no legislative purpose, which is supposed to be a requirement of congressional investigations -- in other words, if, say, Congress is considering regulating sports betting, it can probe betting markets, but its not supposed to try to nail people in random investigations.

The courts, though, have interpreted legislative purpose broadly.

So, Clinton's attempt to get out of his obligation to comply by saying, in effect, "It depends on what the meaning of 'subpoena' is," probably won't work.

There's no doubt that politics is at play here. Republicans love the idea of keeping the Epstein focus on Clinton, who was chummy with the disgraced financier, rather than Trump, also chummy with the disgraced financier. Some Democrats, meanwhile, don't want to muddle their message of transparency and accountability over Epstein by carrying water for Clinton, who is no longer important to the party.

You can argue that contempt of Congress shouldn't be used in politicized investigations to go after partisan enemies, but any such norm was breached in the Biden years when Trump allies Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon went to prison in similar subpoena fights.

You can also argue that it's a bad practice to try to prosecute and jail former presidents, but that norm, too, was cast aside in the Biden years when federal and state prosecutors made Donald Trump their White Whale.

Bill Clinton can be forgiven for having an allergy to awkward depositions. His lies about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky in a 1998 deposition in an unrelated sexual-harassment case led to his impeachment.

On the other hand, he's a master at evasive wording and wiggling out of difficult lines of questioning. He should simply comply with the subpoena and not flirt with a prosecution that would be expensive and time-consuming for him, at best, and put him in the impossible position of arguing for forbearance when none was shown to Navarro or Bannon.

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(Rich Lowry is on Twitter @RichLowry)

(c) 2026 by King Features Syndicate