Hillary Clinton wants Elon Musk dragged before a Democrat Congress, and she doesn’t much care whether Donald Trump pardons him first.
Her party swears the coming payback hearings are about accountability, not revenge.
And Clinton left behind one empty chair that tells a very different story.
Hillary Clinton Found a Loophole to Haul Elon Musk Into the Witness Seat
Democrats haven’t even picked up their new gavels yet, and the woman who lost to Donald Trump in 2016 already has a witness list drafted.
Clinton used High Stakes, the podcast she launched with Kara Swisher ahead of the midterms, to map out her plan for the world’s richest man.
It started with Trump. In early November, the President floated preemptive pardons for Musk and his own staff during a New York Post podcast interview, brushing off the Democrat chatter about going after them. “It’s talk, but if it is talk, we’ll have to protect them,” Trump said.
Clinton heard that and spotted an opening. She told listeners a pardon wouldn’t save Musk from a congressional subpoena. “But that doesn’t mean they can’t be called and forced to testify,” she said.
Then she went a step further.
Her theory goes like this: a pardon wipes out the legal risk that lets a witness refuse to answer questions. “You cannot take the Fifth Amendment because you have no jeopardy,” Clinton said.
So let Trump sign the pardon, she suggested, and then Democrats can “call him in and figure out what he has to say.”
Notice what she never named. A crime. Critics combing through the remarks pointed out that no Democrat clamoring to punish Musk has identified a single statute he supposedly broke. His real offense, as far as anybody can tell, is writing big checks to Republicans, and campaign filing analyses put his midterm spending north of $445 million.
That makes the whole scheme a fishing expedition with subpoena power attached. Drag the man in, strip away his protections, and see what turns up.
The Former First Lady Treated Her Own Subpoena Like Junk Mail
But Clinton has a fresh, personal history with congressional subpoenas, and it doesn’t flatter her one bit.
In August 2025, the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed Bill and Hillary Clinton in its investigation of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Committee leaders accused neither Clinton of wrongdoing. They just wanted answers.
The Clintons stalled for months. In January 2026, their lawyers fired off a letter calling the subpoenas “invalid and legally unenforceable,” leaning on the same legal precedent Trump had used in 2022 to fend off a subpoena from Democrats.
Then the couple simply didn’t show. Bill Clinton skipped his deposition first, and Hillary skipped hers the following morning. Committee staff released video of an empty chair with her name card sitting at the table.
“Hillary Clinton joined her husband in defying a bipartisan, lawful, congressional subpoena to show up today,” Representative James Comer (R-KY), the Oversight chairman, told reporters.
The Clintons even dressed up the snub as patriotism. Their letter to Comer declared, “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.”
The consequences showed up fast. The committee advanced criminal contempt resolutions, and House leaders lined up a floor vote that could have shipped the matter to the Justice Department. House Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) announced he was a “hard no” on contempt.
And the brave stand lasted right up until the Rules Committee started moving. The Clintons agreed to testify at the last minute, and House leaders shelved the vote.
“Once it became clear that the House of Representatives would hold them in contempt, the Clintons completely caved,” Comer said.
Even then, they picked the venue. Both sat for depositions in late February in their hometown of Chappaqua, New York, instead of making the trip to Capitol Hill.
Democrats Screamed Entrapment When Rand Paul Tried This on Fauci
Her Fifth Amendment theory has a backstory too. Democrats hated it the last time somebody used it.
In July, Anthony Fauci sat before the Senate Homeland Security committee chaired by US Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times. Joe Biden had handed Fauci a sweeping preemptive pardon on his way out the door, one reaching all the way back to 2014.
US Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) made the exact argument Clinton now wants to borrow. “He does not have the Fifth Amendment right,” Hawley told the press. “He’s been given a full and unconditional pardon.”
Democrats didn’t cheer. They circled the wagons around the man who helped sell the country on school closures and lockdowns.
“It must be enormously frustrating to know that this hearing is designed to entrap you,” US Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) told Fauci.
US Senator Gary Peters (D-MI), the committee’s top Democrat, complained that “we are instead relitigating the past.” Paul’s committee voted to hold Fauci in contempt anyway in early August.
So when a pardoned Biden-era bureaucrat refused to answer for a pandemic response that shuttered schools, churches, and small businesses, Democrats called the pressure entrapment. When a Trump ally might face the same squeeze, Clinton calls it a game plan.
Maybe the legal theory even holds up. Hawley cites Brown v. Walker, an 1896 Supreme Court case, and plenty of lawyers agree a full pardon can knock out the privilege. But the law isn’t really the issue here. The rule just flips depending on whose name sits on the card.
The Pardon Trap Democrats Plan to Spring in January
Look closer at what Clinton described, because it goes beyond Musk.
A pardon covers past conduct. It doesn’t cover anything a witness says once he raises his right hand. Comer made that exact point about Fauci over the summer, warning that Biden’s pardon wouldn’t shield new testimony.
So the Clinton plan works like a two-step. Trump’s pardon clears away the old exposure, and then a hostile committee manufactures fresh exposure through hours of sworn questioning. One fuzzy memory, one answer that doesn’t match a document some staffer dug up, and Democrats suddenly have the perjury referral they couldn’t get any other way.
That turns presidential mercy into bait.
And Musk won’t be the last name on the list. Democrats have nursed a grudge against him since he bought Twitter and stopped the censorship machine, and the grudge only grew when DOGE started digging through federal spending. Every donor, aide, and adviser who helped Trump now has a front-row view of what’s coming.
Democrats ran on affordability. Their first big idea after winning sounds a lot more like settling scores.
Trump still holds the veto pen through January 2029, and he can’t stop a committee from issuing subpoenas. But he can stop pretending Democrats will play by any rule they won’t follow themselves.
Clinton certainly won’t. Last winter, House investigators set a chair at the deposition table with her name on it, and she left it sitting empty. Now she wants Democrats to set one out for Elon Musk.
Sources: Fox News, “Gutfeld: Hillary adds Musk to her hit list”; IBTimes UK; TheBlaze; Twitchy; Washington Examiner; The Washington Times; The Week; The Daily Beast; Associated Press via OPB and Global News; The New York Times via GV Wire; NBC News; Fox News Digital; The Spokesman-Review; The Daily Signal; Al Jazeera; Ground News; American Bazaar; The Gold Report; PJ Media.