U.S. President Donald Trump and members of his administration attend a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 29, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has officially subpoenaed Attorney General Pam Bondi to appear before his committee, said CBS News.
Comer teased that his committee might vote to demand Bondi appear to address the department's failures around the release of the documents about the investigation into trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. On Tuesday, he made good on that threat.
"As Attorney General, you are directly responsible for overseeing the Department's collection, review, and determinations regarding the release of files pursuant to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and the Committee therefore believes that you possess valuable insight into these efforts," Comer wrote.
Bondi will be required to give a deposition to the committee on April 14.
The committee approved the subpoena with five Republican votes in favor and all Democratic members.
In his letter, Comer teased that in their oversight capacity, the committee "is reviewing the possible mismanagement of the federal government’s investigation of Mr. Jeffrey Epstein and Ms. Ghislaine Maxwell, the circumstances and subsequent investigations of Mr. Epstein’s death, the operation of sex-trafficking rings and ways for the federal government to effectively combat them, the ways in which Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell sought to curry favor and exercise influence to protect their illegal activities, and potential violations of ethics rules related to elected officials."
Bondi could opt to ignore the subpoena, which might then result in a vote to hold her in contempt of Congress. The problem, however, is that Bondi would decide whether to prosecute herself for contempt of Congress.
The last time Bondi appeared before Congress, it didn't go very well, with the top Cabinet official to President Donald Trump losing it over questions from the Judiciary Committee.
Bondi came prepared with a binder of insults about each committee member and read through attacks on them. At one point, when a Democrat was probing her over failures to release the full Epstein files to the House committees, she demanded to know why they weren't celebrating Trump for the stock market. "The Dow! The Dow is over 50,000 right now!"
The comment came as the Dow fell under 50,000. Her outburst prompted laughter from the members and the audience as Bondi appeared to grow increasingly frustrated with them. The rant resulted in weeks of mockery of Bondi with memes and comedians lambasting her for desperately trying to distract from the DOJ's failures on the Epstein files. One critic even turned the testimony into a song in which both Democrats and Republicans peppered her with questions and her answer each time was
