House Oversight Chair says Justice Department to start providing Epstein-related records on Friday

By Ted Barrett, CNN

(CNN) — House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer said in a statement on Monday that the Justice Department will start turning over records related to Jeffrey Epstein on Friday.

This comes after the committee subpoenaed the Justice Department for the records and set a deadline of August 19.

“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.

The announcement by the committee chair came the same day that former Attorney General Bill Barr appeared on Capitol Hill for a deposition by the panel about matters related to Jeffrey Epstein, the first of 10 high-profile Democratic and Republican witnesses subpoenaed by the committee to testify on the case.

Many Republicans have called for more transparency surrounding the case and the release of records related to the matter – and the issue has roiled the House.

Comer told reporters when he arrived that he did not expect the DOJ to meet the deadline because the department is still trying to compile the records. He said he expects to get them “very soon.”

Barr served in the top job at the Department of Justice during President Donald Trump’s first term and was in the role when Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial on federal charges accusing him of sexually abusing underage girls. Epstein was found unresponsive in his cell at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, a federal detention facility.

Barr did not speak to reporters as he arrived about an hour earlier than when he was scheduled to begin his deposition. Barr later departed the deposition without comment.

During a break in the deposition, Comer told reporters that Barr testified that Epstein died by suicide and there was no foul play. Comer acknowledged that is the “general consensus” but said, “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.”

He also said Barr testified about Trump, saying the former attorney general said he “never had conversations with President Trump pertaining to a client list” related to Epstein and that “he had never seen anything that would implicate President Trump in any of this.”

“Democrats’ goal is to try to dig up some type of dirt on President Trump. And what Attorney General Barr testified in there was that he never had conversations with President Trump pertaining to a client list. He didn’t know anything about a client list. He said that he had never seen anything that would implicate President Trump in any of this, and that he believed if there had been anything pertaining to President Trump, with respect to the Epstein list, that he felt like the Biden administration would have probably leaked it out.”

Shortly after Epstein’s death, Barr said that he was “appalled” and “angry” to learn of the Metropolitan Correctional Center’s “failure to adequately secure this prisoner,” and announced that the FBI and the Justice Department’s internal watchdog would investigate Epstein’s death.

In 2023, the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General issued a scathing rebuke of the Bureau of Prisons detailing multiple failures that led to Epstein’s death but found no evidence to contradict the “absence of criminality” in his death.

On Monday, Democrats argued that Republicans were disingenuous with their probe into the Epstein case.

“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, a Democrat from Texas. “Right now, it doesn’t seem like that. It seems like they are going through the motions and they want people to believe that they are digging in.”

Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, a Democrat of Virginia, agreed.

“I think the Democratic side is doing most of the heavy lifting. I don’t think we’re learning much from the questioning from the House Republicans. It doesn’t seem like this is something where they are truly caring about the victims and about trying to get to the bottom of what’s happening,” he said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson took steps to delay until September a vote of the full House to publicly release the DOJ’s Epstein files. The Louisiana has said he supports transparency in the case but wants to give the administration room to handle the matter.

The Republican-led panel additionally subpoenaed nine other individuals for private depositions between August and mid-October. Those are: former Attorneys General Merrick Garland, Jeff Sessions, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder and Alberto Gonzales; former FBI Director James Comey; former special counsel and FBI Director Robert Mueller III; former Secretary of State and first lady Hillary Clinton; and former President Bill Clinton.

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