The House committee investigating the Jeffrey Epstein case issued subpoenas Tuesday to former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and several top former Justice Department officials for their testimony.
The House Oversight Committee announced it had sent out the deposition subpoenas to the Clintons; former Attorneys General Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, William Barr, Merrick Garland, Jeff Sessions and Alberto Gonzales; and former FBI Directors James Comey and Robert Mueller "for testimony related to horrific crimes perpetrated by Jeffrey Epstein."
Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., also issued a subpoena to the Justice Department for "records related to" Epstein, a convicted sex offender who was found dead in his jail cell in 2019 while he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
That subpoena directs the Justice Department to turn over the “full, complete, unredacted Epstein Files” to the committee "on or before August 19, 2025."
The Justice Department has faced furious backlash after it announced last month that after its review of Epstein's case, no other people were expected to be charged and no further information about the case would be released.
The cover letter to the former president calls for him to sit for a deposition on Oct. 14 to answer questions about his relationship with Epstein.
"By your own admission, you flew on Jeffrey Epstein’s private plane four separate times in 2002 and 2003," Comer wrote.
"You were also allegedly close to Ms. Ghislane Maxwell, an Epstein co-conspirator, and attended an intimate dinner with her in 2014, three years after public reports about her involvement in Mr. Epstein’s abuse of minors," the letter said, misspelling the first name of Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in helping Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls.
The Comer letter also says "there are conflicting reports about whether you ever visited Mr. Epstein’s island." Clinton has denied ever going to Epstein's private island, where some of the abuse is alleged to have occurred. President Donald Trump, who also once had a friendly relationship with Epstein and Maxwell, alleged Clinton had gone to the island "28 times" but provided no proof of the claim.
Representatives for the Clintons did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Angel Urena, a spokesperson for the former president, said in a statement in 2019 that Clinton "knows nothing about the terrible crimes" Epstein was charged with. He said Clinton traveled on Epstein's plane four times in 2002 and 2003 while he was traveling to work for the Clinton Foundation and that foundation staffers and Secret Service personnel accompanied him on the trips.
"He has not spoken to Epstein in well over a decade," the statement said.
The letters to the former attorneys general and FBI directors say the committee wants to question them about decisions made in the Epstein case over the years, including his 2008 non-prosecution agreement with a U.S. attorney's office in Florida and the Justice Department's challenges to related victims' civil suits in the years since.
Not included in the current batch of recipients of subpoenas is the then-U.S. attorney who signed off on the original deal, former Trump Labor Secretary Alex Acosta. Acosta resigned his Cabinet post days after Epstein was charged again in 2019.
“He made a deal that people were happy with and then 12 years later were not happy with it,” Trump said at the time.
Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to “produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony” in the Epstein and Maxwell cases last month, hours after The Wall Street Journal reported that he sent a “bawdy” 50th birthday letter to Epstein in 2003. NBC News has not independently verified the document, and Trump denied sending such a letter.
Judges are weighing Bondi's subsequent request to unseal the testimony. In a court filing this week, the administration asked for more time to consider whether it would also seek to unseal the underlying exhibits that were shown to the grand jury.
The filing asked that the judges give the government until Friday to share its position on the issue. It also said that the Justice Department identified some information in the Maxwell case that has not previously been made public but that the bulk of the information is already known.
“The enclosed, annotated transcripts show that much of the information provided during the course of the grand jury testimony — with the exception of the identities of certain victims and witnesses — was made publicly available at trial or has otherwise been publicly reported through the public statements of victims and witnesses,” the filing said.
Lawyers for Maxwell, meanwhile, submitted a filing Tuesday urging the judge not to unseal the transcripts, citing her pending appeal of her conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"Given that she is actively litigating her case and does not know what is in the grand jury record, she has no choice but to respectfully oppose the government’s motion to unseal it," the filing said.
"Jeffrey Epstein is dead. Ghislaine Maxwell is not," it said. "Whatever interest the public may have in Epstein, that interest cannot justify a broad intrusion into grand jury secrecy in a case where the defendant is alive, her legal options are viable, and her due process rights remain."
An attorney for one of Epstein and Maxwell's victims sent her own letter Tuesday urging the judges to release the transcripts — and not to shield anyone else who may be implicated in their crimes.
"By the Government’s admission, 'over one thousand victims' suffered from Epstein’s and Maxwell’s actions. To date, however, the combined forces of our country’s law enforcement agencies have only ever arrested these two individuals in connection with crimes committed against countless young women and girls, and the Government’s recent suggestion that no further criminal investigations are forthcoming is a cowardly abdication of its duties to protect and serve," attorney Sigrid S. McCawley wrote in one of the letters.
"Any effort to redact third party names smacks of a cover up," she added.
