House committee votes to subpoena Attorney General Bondi to answer
questions over the Epstein files
[March 05, 2026]
By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER and STEPHEN GROVES
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Oversight Committee voted Wednesday to
subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi to answer questions over the Justice
Department's handling of files regarding the Jeffrey Epstein sex
trafficking investigation.
Five Republicans joined Democrats to support the subpoena proposed by
GOP Rep. Nancy Mace in a sign of continued frustration among
conservatives with the department's review and release of a tranche of
documents related to the disgraced financier. The move amounted to a
sharp rebuke of Bondi by Republicans who have been clamoring for
information about Epstein's abuse of young girls and his interactions
with rich and powerful people.
“The American people want answers on the Epstein files, and so do we,”
Mace, of South Carolina, said in a post on X.
The Justice Department had no immediate comment on the subpoena.
The Epstein files remain a political headache for the Trump
administration more than a year after Bondi sparked backlash by handing
out binders of documents with no new revelations to conservative
influencers at the White House. Then, after a months-long review, the
Justice Department in July said it had concluded that no Epstein “client
list” existed and there was no reason to make additional files public.
That set off a furor that prompted Congress to pass legislation
demanding that the Justice Department release the files. Since the first
release in December, critics have accused the administration of fumbling
the rollout and withholding too many documents. Administration officials
have said lawyers worked as quickly as possible to properly review,
redact and release millions of documents required under the law.
“For months, Attorney General Bondi has been instrumental in
orchestrating the White House’s cover-up of the Epstein files, and has
failed to comply with our bipartisan subpoena for the release of the
complete, unredacted files," Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top
Democrat on the committee, said in a statement. “The American people
deserve transparency, survivors deserve justice, and we are demanding
answers.”
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Bondi has defended the department’s handling of the files and has
accused Democrats of using the furor over the documents to distract
from Trump’s successes, even though some of the most vocal criticism
has come from members of the president’s own party.
During a fiery congressional hearing last month, Democrats
excoriated Bondi over haphazard redactions in the Epstein files that
exposed intimate details about victims and included nude
photographs. Bondi told lawmakers that the Justice Department had
taken down files when it was made aware that they included victims’
information and said staff had tried to do their “very best" in the
time frame allotted by the legislation mandating the release of the
files.
The move to demand Bondi's testimony comes a week after the Justice
Department said it was looking into whether it had improperly
withheld documents from the files after several news organizations
reported that some records involving uncorroborated accusations made
by a woman against Trump were not among those released to the
public.
That announcement followed news reports saying that a massive
tranche of records released by the Justice Department did not
include several summaries of interviews that the FBI conducted with
an unidentified woman who came forward after Epstein’s 2019 arrest
and claimed to have been sexually assaulted by both Trump and
Epstein when she was a minor in the 1980s.
Former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton, recently sat with lawmakers on the committee
for their own depositions over the former Democratic president’s
connections to Epstein from more than two decades ago.
Bill Clinton told members of Congress on Friday that he “did nothing
wrong” in his relationship with Epstein and saw no signs of
Epstein’s sexual abuse. Hillary Clinton told lawmakers she had no
knowledge of Epstein's crimes and did not recall “ever encountering
Mr. Epstein.”
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