House Oversight Committee subpoenas AG Bondi over missing Epstein files

The Republican-led House Oversight Committee voted Wednesday to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi for testimony on the Justice Department's handling of records related to Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking network. The vote passed 24-19, with five Republicans joining every Democrat on the committee to force the issue.

Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina put forward the motion. She didn't mince words.

"The Epstein case is one of the greatest cover-ups in American history. His global sex trafficking network is larger than what is being revealed. Three million documents have been released, and we still don't have the full truth. Videos are missing. Audio is missing. Logs are missing. There are millions more documents out there. We want to know why the DOJ is more focused on shielding the powerful than delivering justice."

The five Republicans who voted with Mace: Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Michael Cloud of Texas, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania. There is no date yet for the testimony, which Mace described as closed-door with video to be released to the public afterward.

Three million pages released, three million more withheld

The backstory here is a growing tension between Congress and a Justice Department that has moved slowly, even after a law explicitly told it to move fast.

President Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law in November, requiring documents to be made public within 30 days, with some exceptions. At the end of January, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the release of 3 million pages of files. He also acknowledged that roughly 3 million more documents were being withheld for various privileges, along with foreign-language documents and others sealed by judges, as NBC News reports.

That ratio should catch your eye. For every page released, another page stayed buried.

The Oversight Committee had already subpoenaed the Justice Department to turn files over to Congress. The DOJ turned over about 30,000 documents, most of which were already public. Before the transparency act even passed, the DOJ and FBI said in a memo in July that they had conducted an "exhaustive" review and would not charge anyone else or release any more information about the case.

That was the posture of the department before Congress forced its hand. The law changed the equation. Whether the department's culture changed with it is the question Mace is trying to answer.

Files going offline, not just unreleased

The immediate trigger for the subpoena vote was reporting this week that tens of thousands of pages are missing from the released files. The Justice Department acknowledged that tens of thousands of Epstein files are "offline" while it deals with redaction and privacy issues.

A DOJ spokesperson told NBC News that the department has not "deleted any files" and offered this explanation:

"47,635 files were offline for further review and should be ready for re-production by the end of the week. This is the most transparent Department of Justice in history, and all responsive documents will be repopulated online once proper redactions are made."

Among the missing documents: summaries and notes from three FBI interviews. The department also said it was working around the clock to address victim concerns and redact personally identifiable information and images of a sexual nature.

Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, and Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, co-authored the transparency act. Both have said the DOJ's withholding of documents is a violation of the law they wrote.

When lawmakers from both parties who wrote the bill agree that the executive branch is violating it, that's not a partisan complaint. That's a compliance problem.

Bondi's defense and Mace's response

Bondi testified before the House Judiciary Committee last month and touted the department's efforts. Her account was not insignificant:

"More than 500 attorneys and reviewers spent thousands of hours painstakingly reviewing millions of pages to comply with Congress's law. We've released more than 3 million pages, including 180,000 images, all to the public, while doing our very best in the time frame allotted by the legislation to protect victims."

That hearing turned contentious, veering into questions about stock market performance and other topics far afield from Epstein. Mace made clear she intends a different kind of session:

"I have a lot more questions, and I don't expect to be talking about the stock market, so she better not bring those notes when she comes to the Oversight Committee."

She also noted that Bondi has never appeared before the Oversight Committee on this matter. "I need to get to the bottom of this for other survivors of Jeffrey Epstein," Mace said.

The DOJ and FBI memo that tried to close the door

It's worth lingering on the July memo. Before the transparency act became law, before public pressure forced the release of millions of pages, the DOJ and FBI's official position was that the investigation was over. No more charges. No more disclosures. Case closed.

That memo said the review covered over 1,000 victims. The network involved Epstein and his co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell. And yet the institutional instinct was to seal it shut.

Congress overrode that instinct with legislation. The question now is whether the department is complying with the spirit of the law or merely performing compliance while keeping the most sensitive material out of reach. Files going "offline" for review after they were already released does not inspire confidence. Neither does handing Congress 30,000 documents, most already public, in response to a subpoena.

What's actually at stake

The Epstein case sits in a unique space in American public life. It is one of the rare issues where genuine bipartisan anger exists, where ordinary people across the political spectrum look at the facts and reach the same conclusion: powerful people were protected.

The transparency act passed Congress because enough members recognized that institutional secrecy was eroding public trust. That trust erodes further every time documents vanish, redactions expand, or the department's response to oversight is to run out the clock.

Mace wrote on X that "AG Bondi claims the DOJ has released all of the Epstein files. The record is clear: they have not." That's not an attack on the administration. It's a statement about whether the bureaucracy is doing what the law requires. Those are different things, and Mace seems to understand the distinction.

President Trump himself signed the law. He has referred to Epstein as a "creep" and has said he stopped socializing with him in the early 2000s. The White House, when asked about the documents last week, pointed to allegations in the files and called them "unfounded and false" claims submitted to the FBI before the 2020 election.

None of that changes the core obligation. A law was passed. Documents were required to be released. Millions remain withheld. Tens of thousands went offline. Oversight exists precisely for moments like this.

The survivors of Epstein's network deserve a DOJ that moves with urgency, not one that asks for patience while files disappear from public view. Congress has the authority to compel answers. Wednesday, it voted to use it.