The Republican-led House Oversight Committee voted on March 4 to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi to answer questions over the Justice Department’s handling of files regarding the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation.
The measure, proposed by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), was approved in a 24–19 vote with bipartisan support.
Mace and four other Republicans, Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), Michael Cloud (R-Texas), and Scott Perry (R-Pa.), joined lawmakers from the Democratic Party on the committee to vote in favour.
“The American people deserve answers, victims deserve justice,” Mace said in a post on X.
The vote came after procedural debates, and as Democrats accused the Department of Justice (DOJ) of failing to comply with an earlier subpoena and obstructing congressional oversight, which the DOJ has denied.
Bondi has defended the department’s handling of the files and has accused Democrats of using the furor over the documents to distract from President Donald Trump’s successes in his second term.
The committee’s top Democrat, Ranking Member Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), accused Bondi of taking part in a cover-up.
“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,” Garcia said. “The American people deserve transparency, survivors deserve justice, and we are demanding answers.”
Bondi and the DOJ did not immediately return a request for comment.
The disclosure of the files was mandated after Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Trump signed into law in November 2025.
The DOJ said in January that it had released about half of the roughly 6 million Epstein documents, including 3 million pages, 180,000 images, and 2,000 videos related to the late convicted sex offender and accused sex trafficker, according to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche at the time.
Federal officials identified 6 million pages as “potentially responsive” to the transparency law, which gave a deadline to release files connected to Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, Blanche added.
“The number of responsive pages is significantly smaller than the total number of pages initially collected,” he said. “That’s why I mentioned a moment ago, we’re releasing more than 3 million pages today, and not the 6 million pages that we collected.”
