Former US President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of State, have agreed to testify in the congressional investigation into late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, allowing them to avoid being found in contempt of Congress.

The House of Representatives had been poised to vote this week on holding the couple in contempt for refusing to appear before the chamber’s Oversight Committee.

Bill Clinton was acquainted with Epstein, who died in prison in 2019, but has denied knowledge of his sex offending and says he cut off contact two decades ago.

He will appear for a deposition on 27 February, and Hillary Clinton will appear the day before.

It will be the first time a former US president has testified to a congressional panel since Gerald Ford did so in 1983.

The Republican-led House Oversight Committee has asked for the depositions to be filmed and transcribed, with no time limit.

On Tuesday, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer said: “Once it became clear that we would hold them in contempt, the Clintons completely caved.”

“Republicans and Democrats on the Oversight Committee have been clear: no one is above the law – and that includes the Clintons,” he added in a statement.

The House was expected to vote this week on holding the former president and former secretary of state in criminal contempt of Congress, but the plans were abruptly put on hold on Monday as the Clintons’ legal team said they would agree to the committee’s terms.

The couple, both Democrats, had previously struck a defiant tone, saying they had already submitted sworn statements covering the “limited information” they had on Epstein.

They had dismissed the legal summonses issued by the panel as “nothing more than a ploy to attempt to embarrass political rivals, as President Trump has directed”.

The oversight committee then approved a measure to hold the Clintons in contempt late last month, with the support of several Democrats.

On Saturday, as a vote in the full House loomed, lawyers for the Clintons made an offer to provide limited testimony that would have centred on a four-hour interview by Bill Clinton. But Comer expressed concerns that the former president would stonewall questions and run down the clock.

On Monday evening, Bill Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff Angel Ureña posted on X confirming the couple would appear before the panel.

“They negotiated in good faith,” Ureña wrote in a tweet directed at the House Oversight Committee. “You did not.

“They told you under oath what they know, but you don’t care. But the former President and former Secretary of State will be there. They look forward to setting a precedent that applies to everyone.”

If the House had approved a contempt resolution, it would have been referred to the justice department, which then could have decided whether to prosecute the Clintons.

Neither Clinton has been accused of wrongdoing by survivors of Epstein’s abuse, and they have denied knowledge of his sex offending.

Hillary Clinton, former US senator and secretary of state, and the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016, has said she never met or spoke to Epstein.

Epstein’s private jet logs show that Clinton took four international flights in 2002 and 2003.

Shortly after Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges in July 2019, Clinton’s spokesperson said the former president took trips on the plane including “stops in connection with the work of the Clinton Foundation”.

The former president also appears at the late financier’s estate in photos that were among a batch of records released by the justice department to comply with a law passed by Congress mandating the disclosure of all investigative material relating to the late convicted paedophile.

One picture shows the former president swimming in a pool, and another shows him lying on his back with his hands behind his head in what appears to be a hot tub.

Ureña, Clinton’s spokesman, said at the time the photos were released in December that they were decades old and Clinton had stopped associating with Epstein before his crimes came to light.

Last month, the Clintons wrote a letter to Comer criticising his handling of the Epstein investigation.

“The decisions you have made, and the priorities you have set as chairman regarding the Epstein investigation, have prevented progress in discovering the facts about the government’s role,” the letter said.

They added: “There is no plausible explanation for what you are doing other than partisan politics.”