Nancy Mace prompts Congress to depose AG Pam Bondi over Epstein files

WASHINGTON — The House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify about her department’s handling of the Epstein files after South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace proposed a motion to force the appearance.

Mace, who has become a vocal advocate for sexual assault victims, offered the motion during an hours-long committee hearing on March 4 marked by intense debate.

“We will not stay silent while the American people are kept in the dark. Today brings us one step closer to the truth the establishment has tried so hard to keep buried," Mace said in a statement.

The Charleston-area Republican, who is one of five Republicans running to be governor of South Carolina, has sought President Donald Trump’s endorsement in the crowded GOP primary. So far, he has not weighed in on the contest. Dragging his top prosecutor in to testify before the committee is not likely to win Mace points with the president.

Trump’s name is mentioned thousands of times in the files, but he has denied any wrongdoing in his dealings with Jeffery Epstein, a social friend in New York and Palm Beach until they had a falling out after the financier hired a young woman employee from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

Both Mace and the White House have separately said Trump has been completely “exonerated,” concerning Epstein.

Members appeared to initially thwart Mace’s effort after Committee Chairman James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, said he spoke to Bondi’s Chief of Staff Stuart McCommas, who offered his boss for a private committee briefing. McCommas is a former White House official.

Comer initially said members voted down the motion, even as California Democrats Ro Khanna and Robert Garcia cheered the effort. But a final tally showed that it actually succeeded.

Mace’s motion prevailed with 24 members of the committee voting to depose Bondi, including fellow Republicans Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Michael Cloud of Texas. Every Democrat who attended the hearing voted for the motion. Mace was seen giving Burchett a fist bump following the vote.

Mace did not win over her fellow South Carolinian on the committee. U.S. Rep. William Timmons, R-Greenville, was among the 19 Republicans who voted against the measure.

The White House and Justice Department did not immediately return a request seeking comment.

Allegations leveled at Trump have become the center of an escalating controversy about records the Justice Department omitted from the public database of Epstein records. The Wall Street Journal published an account March 3 saying that 47,635 Epstein files have been removed for further review by DOJ lawyers. The department said the files should be available for public review by the end of the week.

Missing from the document release are three interviews that FBI agents conducted with a woman who alleged Epstein assaulted her as a teenager on Hilton Head in the mid-1980s. The same woman told agents that Trump forced her to perform a sex act on him when she was underage, but the Justice Department did not disclose those files.

It is unclear how seriously the FBI took her claims. Her allegations so far remain uncorroborated.

The woman went on to have a troubled life, accumulating a record of criminal charges, drug dependency and domestic turmoil. She filed a lawsuit as an anonymous Jane Doe in 2019 and eventually received a settlement from Epstein’s estate. The settlement amount is unknown.

Mace has long been an advocate for sexual abuse victims. She has previously spoken about being raped as a teenager, an experience she first disclosed in 2019 during a powerful speech on the S.C. Statehouse floor when she was a state lawmaker.

In November, Mace joined three other Republican members in bucking their own party and partnering with Democrats to force the Justice Department to release the files. Her position pitted her against the White House.

The bill requiring the DOJ to release all documents related to Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell was signed into law by Trump in November.

Since the revelations about the missing documents, Mace has attempted to thread a needle in her public communications by separating Bondi’s Justice Department from Trump, whom she has lauded for signing the legislation that forced the disclosure into law.

“There are millions more documents out there, and we want to know why the DOJ is more focused on shielding the powerful than delivering justice,” Mace said in a news release. “The Jeffrey Epstein case will go down as one of the greatest cover-ups in American history."