House Republicans issue subpoena for Jeffrey Epstein files
The Republican-led House subpoenaed the Justice Department on Tuesday for its files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, potentially setting up a contentious standoff between Congress and the Trump administration over an issue that has sparked major headaches for President Donald Trump.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) formally issued the subpoena nearly two weeks after one of the panel’s subcommittees – with some GOP support – voted to compel the Justice Department to release the files. Under House rules, Comer was obligated to issue the subpoena, and no full House vote was required.
Along with a demand for the Epstein documents, the chairman also subpoenaed documents or testimony from several high-profile figures, who had either investigated or associated with Epstein in the past. That list included Bill and Hillary Clinton as well as a slew of former attorneys general under Democratic and Republican administrations.
In all, Comer issued 11 subpoenas for documents and testimony covering two decades of previous Epstein investigations. His demands only add to the pressure on the Trump administration as it struggles to contain a backlash over its refusal to release documents tied to those earlier probes.
The subpoena issued to the Justice Department set an Aug. 19 deadline for it to hand over its records on Epstein and his imprisoned associate, Ghislaine Maxwell.
“While the Department undertakes efforts to uncover and publicly disclose additional information related to Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell’s cases, it is imperative that Congress conduct oversight of the federal government’s enforcement of sex trafficking laws generally and specifically its handling of the investigation and prosecution of Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell,” Comer wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
“The Committee may use the results of this investigation to inform legislative solutions to improve federal efforts to combat sex trafficking and reform the use of non-prosecution agreements and/or plea agreements in sex-crime investigations. Documents related to the Department’s investigation and prosecution of Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell are relevant to the Committee’s investigation.”
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to answer questions about how the department would respond or whether it would attempt to negotiate terms for a partial release.
It was also not immediately clear how the targets of the other subpoenas – which, in addition to the Clintons, included former FBI directors James B. Comey and Robert S. Mueller III and former attorneys general Merrick Garland, William P. Barr, Jeff Sessions, Loretta E. Lynch, Eric Holder and Alberto Gonzales – would respond.
Comer set a staggered schedule for those depositions of those individuals to take place, starting Aug. 19 and ending Oct. 14.
“Because you were Attorney General during the time when Mr. Epstein was under investigation by federal authorities and a non-prosecution agreement with Mr. Epstein was negotiated by the Department of Justice, the Committee believes that you possess knowledge and information relevant to its investigation,” the chairman wrote to Gonzales, who served under President George W. Bush.
Specifically, the committee’s subpoena to the Justice Department sought all documents and communications tied to the investigations of Epstein and Maxwell that led to their indictments in Manhattan in 2019 and 2020, as well as records stemming from an earlier investigation of Epstein in South Florida that ended in a 2007 non-prosecution agreement.
The subpoena also sought communications surrounding Epstein’s 2019 death, which has been ruled a suicide, and all Epstein-related communications between the Justice Department and the office of the president. It specifically mentioned communications between the department and the office of former President Joe Biden.
The Justice Department and FBI chose last month not to make public much of the information Comer’s committee is now seeking, announcing that decision in a joint memo that sparked the latest wave of backlash from segments of Trump’s base.
Much of the material is subject to court-ordered sealing, the agencies’ memo said. And a significant portion of the rest, the memo continued, was either already aired publicly at Maxwell’s trial or would be inappropriate for public distribution because it could identify victims or unfairly name third parties when there was not sufficient evidence to suggest they were complicit in Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes.
Comer’s issuing of the Epstein subpoenas sets off a likely clash between the GOP-led House, which has been struggling to satisfy demands from the GOP base for more transparency on Epstein, and Trump’s Justice Department, which has stood by the memo’s conclusions.
Though the department has not yet indicated how it might respond, Justice officials have several options. They could attempt to negotiate with lawmakers to modify the terms or seek to reach an agreement limiting how widely any documents they hand over could be shared.
For instance, when Garland last year shared an unreleased portion of special counsel Jack Smith’s report on Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents with lawmakers, he limited that release to leadership on the House and Senate Judiciary committees and first secured agreements from those members not to share the document further or publicly discuss its findings. However, neither the House nor the Senate had subpoenaed that report.
Justice Department lawyers also could seek to assert several privileges – such as executive privilege or law enforcement privilege – in an attempt to keep the documents shielded. Last year, for instance, the department, under Garland, rejected subpoenas from two Republican-led House committees seeking audio of special counsel Robert K. Hur’s interview with Biden, saying releasing them served no “investigative purpose.”
If Congress is not satisfied with the Justice Department’s response, it could seek to enforce the subpoena by voting to hold Bondi in contempt of Congress, though it would ultimately be up to the department she leads to decide whether to pursue a criminal prosecution.
Typically, the notion of a Republican-held House holding a contempt vote against a Republican-appointed attorney general would be unthinkable. But furor among many GOP lawmakers has only deepened since Bondi’s original decision not to release the files.
A number of them have said they intend to sign on to a bipartisan discharge petition that would compel their release, set to come to the floor in September. The backlash became hard for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) to contain, and he decided to recess for August a day early to avoid more unpredictable votes on the Epstein issue.
“We will be pushing for the discharge petition right when we come back. We need the force of law to compel the release of the files,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California), one of the petition’s sponsors.
Democrats are attempting to exploit the GOP’s divisions on the issue and used procedural tactics to put Republicans on the spot before the House recessed. One of those actions – a motion to subpoena the Justice Department by Rep. Summer Lee (Pennsylvania), the leading Democrat of the House Oversight subcommittee on federal law enforcement – succeeded on July 23 and led to Comer’s subpoena on Tuesday.
The measure passed 8-2 with bipartisan support after House Republicans Brian Jack of Georgia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania joined Democrats to pass it. It included language intended to protect the identities of the victims.
Separately, another Oversight subcommittee voted last month to subpoena testimony from Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence in Texas for her 2021 conviction for sex trafficking and other crimes.
Comer’s committee has rejected her request for immunity and access to the deposition questions beforehand but agreed to postpone an initial Aug. 11 interview date until after the Supreme Court decides whether it will take up her appeal of her conviction.