The House Oversight Committee has sent out subpoenas to several former high-ranking officials, including former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as Trump’s former attorneys general and FBI directors. This is part of its ongoing investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. These demands for testimony and documents come after a House Oversight subcommittee approved measures last month.
The subpoenas focus on people who served in the past four presidential administrations. Those called to testify include former Attorneys General Merrick Garland, Bill Barr, Alberto Gonzales, Jeff Sessions, Loretta Lynch, and Eric Holder, as well as former FBI Directors James Comey and Robert Mueller. Notably, Sessions and Barr led the Justice Department during President Donald Trump’s first term.
According to CBS, the goal is to review how the federal government enforces sex trafficking laws, especially how it handled the investigations and prosecutions of Epstein and Maxwell. The committee also wants to use what it learns to propose new laws that could improve federal efforts to fight sex trafficking and change how non-prosecution and plea deals are used in sex crime cases. The Justice Department must provide the requested records by August 19, and depositions are scheduled to take place in August, September, and October.
The House Oversight Committe is getting names
The Clintons are part of the investigation because of former President Bill Clinton’s past connections to Epstein and his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, in the early 2000s. Additionally, Attorney General Pam Bondi has been subpoenaed for documents related to the Justice Department’s investigation into Epstein and Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence.
This new push by Congress follows a recent memo from the Justice Department and FBI last month, which stated that Epstein did not have a “client list” of powerful people and confirmed that his death in jail in 2019, while awaiting trial, was a suicide. The memo also said there was no solid evidence that Epstein blackmailed influential figures. The Justice Department and FBI said they did not plan to release any more information about Epstein’s case.
In response to this criticism, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche recently met with Ghislaine Maxwell in Tallahassee, where she was serving her sentence before being moved to a low-security prison in Texas. Maxwell was convicted in 2021 for helping Epstein recruit, groom, and abuse underage girls, and her conviction is now being appealed to the Supreme Court.
Apart from the Justice Department’s actions, there are separate efforts to release grand jury transcripts related to Epstein and Maxwell’s cases. Blanche and Bondi have officially asked federal judges in New York to make these transcripts public, even though grand jury proceedings are usually kept secret. At the same time, lawmakers have been pushing to make federal investigation files public.
A disagreement in the House over releasing these files led to canceled votes and an early departure from Washington for the month-long summer break. House Republicans introduced a non-binding resolution last month to release the federal probe files, but Speaker Mike Johnson has said the House will not vote on it until lawmakers return in September.
Epstein was charged with federal sex trafficking crimes in 2019. Before that, he was investigated by federal authorities in Florida in the 2000s, which ended with a federal non-prosecution agreement and a guilty plea to state prostitution charges in 2008.
Published: Aug 5, 2025 01:16 pm