House committee subpoenas AG Pam Bondi on Epstein files

The U.S. House Oversight Committee voted March 4 to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify about the Department of Justice's handling of its release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Some members of Congress have expressed frustration and outrage that the department only released a little more than 3 million pages of the 6 million it possesses related to investigations of the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender who died by suicide while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. Congress voted in December to force the Justice Department to release all of the Epstein files with limited redactions to protect victims and their identities.

Multiple media outlets have reported that the Justice Department improperly withheld FBI files that contained allegations against President Donald Trump in its release. On Dec. 21, DOJ officials acknowledged the department had pulled at least 15 photographs from the government website hosting the massive trove of documents.

The Oversight Committee is conducting its own probe of the Epstein investigations. The 24 to 19 vote to summon Bondi was led by South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican. Four other Republicans, Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Michael Cloud of Texas and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania joined with Democrats on the committee.

Before the committee voted, Chairman James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, said Bondi's chief of staff had offered to brief small groups of members.

The deposition will focus on the Department of Justice’s handling of its investigation of Epstein, and its compliance with a law requiring all documents related to the sex offender to be made public.

“AG Bondi claims the DOJ has released all of the Epstein files. The record is clear: they have not,” Mace said in a social media post. “The Epstein case is one of the greatest cover-ups in American history. His global sex trafficking network is larger than what is being revealed. Three million documents have been released, and we still don't have the full truth. Videos are missing. Audio is missing. Logs are missing. There are millions more documents out there."