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The Justice Department will begin turning over records related to Jeffrey Epstein to Congress on Friday, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) announced Monday, following weeks of pressure from Democrats and some Republicans demanding more transparency into the disgraced financier’s case.
“Officials with the Department of Justice have informed us that the Department will begin to provide Epstein-related records to the Oversight Committee this week on Friday,” Comer said in a statement, noting that the panel had subpoenaed the material and set an August 19 deadline.
The news came as former Attorney General Bill Barr sat for a closed-door deposition on Capitol Hill, the first of 10 high-profile witnesses subpoenaed by the committee. Barr, who led the Justice Department under former President Donald Trump, was in office when Epstein was found dead by suicide in a federal detention center in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Barr offered no public remarks before or after his testimony. But Comer told reporters during a break that Barr reaffirmed his long-held position: that Epstein died by suicide and there was “no foul play.”
“That’s the general consensus,” Comer said, while adding, “there was a blind spot in the cameras. It seemed like there was a lot of stuff that was there to potentially aid in a suicide.”
Comer also said Barr denied any knowledge of Epstein-related conversations with Trump. “He testified that he never had conversations with President Trump pertaining to a client list, that he had never seen anything that would implicate President Trump in any of this,” Comer said.
Democrats on the panel accused Republicans of pursuing the probe to shield Trump and to fuel speculation rather than focus on victims or transparency.
“The question is if they are truly invested in doing what’s right and making sure that there’s real transparency for the American people,” said Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas). “Right now, it doesn’t seem like that.”
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) argued Democrats were driving the substance of the investigation. “I don’t think we’re learning much from the questioning from the House Republicans,” he said.
Comer’s committee has issued subpoenas to nine other former officials to testify between August and October, including ex-Attorneys General Merrick Garland, Jeff Sessions, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder and Alberto Gonzales; former FBI Directors James Comey and Robert Mueller; former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; and former President Bill Clinton.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has postponed until September a planned House vote on publicly releasing the DOJ’s Epstein files, saying he supports transparency but wants to give the administration more time to handle the process.
Epstein’s death has fueled years of conspiracy theories. In 2023, the Justice Department’s inspector general faulted the Bureau of Prisons for “numerous and serious failures” that allowed Epstein to take his own life but found no evidence contradicting the conclusion that his death was a suicide.
