US Attorney General Bondi faces Epstein files subpoena

A committee of US lawmakers has voted to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi to answer questions over the Justice Department's handling of files regarding the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation.

Five Republicans on the House Oversight Committee joined Democrats to support the subpoena proposed by Republican Nancy Mace in a sign of continued frustration among conservatives with the department's review and release of a tranche of documents related to the disgraced financier.

"The American people want answers on the Epstein files, and so do we," Mace, of South Carolina, said in a post on social media platform X.

The Justice Department had no immediate comment on the subpoena.

The Epstein files remain a political headache for the Trump administration more than a year after Bondi sparked backlash by handing out binders of documents with no new revelations to conservative influencers at the White House.

Then, after a months-long review, the Justice Department in July said it had concluded that no Epstein "client list" existed and there was no reason to make additional files public.

That set off a furore that prompted Congress to pass legislation demanding the Justice Department release the files.

Since the first release in December, critics have accused the administration of fumbling the rollout and withholding too many documents.

Administration officials have said lawyers worked as quickly as possible to properly review, redact and release millions of documents required under the law.

"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," Representative Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the committee, said in a statement.

"The American people deserve transparency, survivors deserve justice, and we are demanding answers."

Bondi has defended the department's handling of the files and has accused Democrats of using the furore over the documents to distract from Trump's successes, even though some of the most vocal criticism has come from members of the president's own party.

During a fiery congressional hearing in February, Democrats excoriated Bondi over haphazard redactions in the Epstein files that exposed intimate details about victims and included nude photographs.

Bondi told lawmakers the Justice Department had taken down files when it was made aware they included victims' information and said staff had tried to do their "very best" in the time frame allotted by the legislation mandating the release of the files.

The move to demand Bondi's testimony comes a week after the Justice Department said it was looking into whether it had improperly withheld documents from the files.

That announcement followed news reports saying a massive tranche of records released by the Justice Department did not include several summaries of interviews the FBI conducted with an unidentified woman who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by both Trump and Epstein when she was a minor in the 1980s.

Former president Bill Clinton and his wife, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, recently sat with lawmakers on the committee for their own depositions over the former Democratic president's connections to Epstein from more than two decades ago.

Bill Clinton told members of Congress on Friday he "did nothing wrong" in his relationship with Epstein and saw no signs of Epstein's sexual abuse.

Hillary Clinton told lawmakers she had no knowledge of Epstein's crimes and did not recall "ever encountering Mr Epstein".