Five Republicans on the House Oversight Committee joined their Democratic colleagues in voting to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify over her handling of the Epstein files release Wednesday afternoon.
In a 24-19 vote, the committee voted to force Bondi to sit for a deposition to face questioning about the Justice Department’s botched rollout of the files. Congress passed legislation to force the department to release millions of documents associated with the investigation into the deceased sex offender – which the department responded to past the deadline.
Republican Rep. Nancy Mace had introduced a motion to subpoena the attorney general after criticizing the Justice Department for suppressing files.
“The American people want answers on the Epstein files, and so do we,” Mace wrote on X.
Mace was joined by her Republican colleagues, Reps. Lauren Boebert, Michael Cloud, Scott Perry and Tim Burchett.
The subpoena vote comes one day after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick agreed to voluntarily sit for a deposition about his relationship with Epstein, his former neighbor. Lutnick had misrepresented the extent of his relationship in interviews and failed to mention he briefly visited Epstein’s island to have lunch once in 2012.
Bondi faced criticism from both lawmakers and the public last year after failing to deliver on her promise to release information on the government’s investigation into Epstein.
Initially, Bondi made a public show of handing conservative influencers binders full of already-public documents on Epstein. When pressed for more documents, the attorney general asserted that Epstein’s “client list” was “sitting on my desk” and waiting for review.
But later, administration officials said it wasn’t Epstein’s “client list”, but rather just a series of documents.
Eventually, the Justice Department claimed there was no other necessary public information that needed to be released about Epstein. Bondi claimed that while there were hundreds of hours of video of Epstein, they contained depictions of child pornography
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