BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts.

Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live in the BBC World Service studios in central London. I'm Tim Franks.

The foul clouds surrounding the late sex offender, Epstein continues to spread and to contaminate.

On Monday, the former US President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary, herself a former Secretary of State,

agreed to testify before a congressional investigation into Epstein.

Mr and Mrs Clinton deny any wrongdoing and has strenuously argued against the demand

led by Republican lawmakers that they be questioned. But faced with the prospect of a vote holding

them in criminal contempt of Congress and the prospect of that vote being passed with support

from some Democrats, the Clinton's changed cause.

The BBC's Burt Busman is in Washington.

What's this questioning going to consist of?

That's unclear.

There's still kind of negotiations over what form this will take.

What the Clintons have offered is to sit down for four hours to discuss this with the committee,

looking into the Epstein case.

But it's unclear if they will see that as enough.

What we do know is that they're at least willing to sit down now after having really resisted for quite some time.

They had previously said they had already given sworn statements with what they described as very limited information on their dealings with Epstein in the past.

Bill Clinton, for example, had long acknowledged that he had traveled on Epstein's aircraft, which he says was in connection to the Clinton Foundation.

And Hillary says she never met or spoke to him at all.

And they, you know, they very much see this as an attempt by Republicans to embarrass political opponents

of the current President Donald Trump. And how unusual is it for former presidents to testify

...