WASHINGTON — Attorney General Pam Bondi faced Democratic calls to testify before Congress on Wednesday following a newspaper's report that she told President Donald Trump that his name appeared in the files of the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking investigation.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Bondi told Trump his name was among many high-profile figures mentioned in the files, which the Justice Department this month said it would not release despite a clamor from online sleuths, conspiracy theorists and members of Trump's base.
Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks at a July 15 news conference at the Drug Enforcement Administration in Arlington, Va.
Trump's personal ties to Epstein are well-established and his name is already known to have been included in records related to the wealthy financier, who killed himself in jail in 2019 as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges.
Meanwhile, a House subcommittee voted Wednesday to subpoena the Department of Justice for files in the Epstein investigation after Democrats goaded Republican lawmakers to defy Trump and GOP leadership to support the action.
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The vote showed the intensifying push for disclosures in the Epstein investigation even as House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. — caught between demands from Trump and clamoring from his own members for the House to act — sent lawmakers home a day early for its August recess.
The House Committee on Oversight also issued a subpoena Wednesday for Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted sex offender and girlfriend of the late Epstein, to testify before committee officials in August.
Three Republicans on the powerful House Oversight Committee voted with Democrats for the subpoena, sending it through on an 8-2 vote tally.
Democrats cheered the action as proof that their push for disclosures in the Epstein investigation was growing stronger. The committee agreed to redact information on victims, yet Democrats successfully blocked a push by Republicans to only subpoena information that was deemed to be “credible” — language that Trump also used when discussing what he would support releasing.
Commuters walk past a bus stop July 17 near Nine Elms Station as activists put up a poster showing President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein near the US Embassy in London.
Sen. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, responded to Wednesday's Wall Street Journal report by calling on Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
"We need to bring Bondi and Patel into the Judiciary Committee to testify about this now," Schiff said in a video posted on social media.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the report but issued a joint statement from Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche saying that investigators reviewed the records and "nothing in the files warranted further investigation or prosecution."
Epstein
"As par of our routine briefing, we made the president aware of the findings," the statement said.
The mere inclusion of a person's name in the Epstein files does not imply wrongdoing and he was known to have been associated with multiple prominent figures, including Trump.
Over the years, thousands of pages of records were released through lawsuits, Epstein's criminal dockets, public disclosures and Freedom of Information Act requests.
They include a 2016 deposition in which an accuser recounted she spent several hours with Epstein at Trump's Atlantic City casino but didn't say if she met Trump and did not accuse him of wrongdoing.
Trump also said he once thought Epstein was a "terrific guy" but they later had a falling out.
President Donald Trump listens during a June 27 briefing with the media at the White House in Washington.
Grand jury request
A judge rejected a Trump administration request Wednesday to unseal transcripts from grand jury investigations of Epstein years ago in Florida, though a similar request for the work of a different grand jury is pending in New York.
U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg in West Palm Beach said the request to release grand jury documents from 2005 and 2007 did not meet any of the extraordinary exceptions under federal law that could make them public.
The Justice Department last week asked the judge to release records to quell a storm among Trump supporters who believe there was a conspiracy to protect Epstein’s clients and conceal videos of crimes being committed and other evidence.
In 2008, Epstein cut a deal with federal prosecutors in Florida that allowed him to escape more severe federal charges and instead plead guilty to state charges of procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and solicitation of prostitution.
Blanche asked judges in Florida and New York to unseal transcripts from grand jury proceedings that resulted in indictments against Epstein and Maxwell.
Maxwell
Federal grand juries hear evidence in secret and then decide whether there is enough for an indictment. Experts say the transcripts likely would not reveal much because prosecutors typically are trying to present only enough material to get charges and don’t introduce the entire investigation.
Epstein was arrested in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges, while Maxwell was charged with helping him abuse teenage girls.
Trump and his justice department stoked the furor over records. In February, far-right influencers were invited to the White House and provided with binders marked “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” and “Declassified.” The binders contained documents that largely already were in the public domain.
The department on July 7 acknowledged that Epstein did not have a list of clients. It also said no more files related to his case would be made public.
