In a rare bipartisan rebuke, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee voted 24-19 on 4 March 2026 to compel Attorney GeneralPam Bondi to testify under oathabout the Justice Department's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
The motion was introduced by Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, and passed with five Republicans crossing the aisle to vote alongside Democrats. The four GOP members who joined Mace were Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Rep. Michael Cloud of Texas, and Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.
The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment in the hours following the vote.
The subpoena of Bondi would bring the highest-level Trump administration official yet before the House panel as its investigation into the government's handling of Epstein's case presses forward. The vote came during a hearing that had nothing to do with Epstein; Mace forced the motion mid-session, catching committee leadership off-guard.
Ahead of the Wednesday vote, Oversight Chairman James Comer told the committee he had spoken with the attorney general's chief of staff, and that Bondi had offered to give members a briefing, a few at a time, regarding the Justice Department's Epstein files. That offer was not enough.
Mace was unequivocal in her reasoning. 'I know that Bondi has testified before the Judiciary Committee, but she's not testified before me or the Oversight Committee. I need to get to the bottom of this for other survivors of Jeffrey Epstein,' she told reporters after the vote.
Mace specified the subpoena is for closed-door testimony with video that would be released to the public afterward. There is no date yet for the testimony. Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the panel, said in the committee room that the public had 'significant questions' about the department's process and that Bondi should 'directly answer questions about the release of the files, about transparency, about ensuring that victims and survivors are protected.'
The immediate trigger for the subpoena vote was a Wall Street Journal investigation published the same day. Reporters Sadie Gurman and Caitlin Ostroff pressed the Justice Department about the discrepancy, and a spokeswoman confirmed that 47,635 documents were being held offline for further review. The department had not volunteered that information and confirmed it only after being directly asked.
Among the files taken down were FBI Form 302 witness interview reports containing an unverified allegation from a woman who claimed Trump sexually abused her as a minor in the 1980s. The files released in January included a summary of the woman's allegations and a Form 302 from her first interview, but not three other Form 302s, including the interviews in which Trump was named. The Justice Department has denied deliberately withholding documents mentioning Trump. Trump himself has not been accused of wrongdoing.
The legal framework against precisely this type of withholding is explicit. TheEpstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law on 19 November 2025, states that no record shall be withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.
Source: International Business Times UK
