Former Attorney General Bill Barr arrived on Capitol Hill on Monday for a deposition by the House Oversight Committee 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.
The move by the panel comes as the case has roiled the House – with many Republicans calling for more transparency and the release of records related to the matter. The committee has also issued a subpoena to the Justice Department calling for it to provide Congress any Epstein files in its possession, with victims’ names redacted. Barr’s appearance comes one day before the DOJ is supposed to turn over those records to the committee.
But the committee chairman, Rep. James Comer, told reporters when he arrived that he does not expect the DOJ to meet that deadline because the department is still trying to compile the records. He said he expects to get them “very soon.”
“You can imagine, how many documents there are. I think we’ll receive the documents very soon,” the Kentucky Republican said. “They’re compiling everything together. I think we’re working together in a good-faith effort and everything’s coming along.”
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.
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.
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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