The committee’s actions showed how even with lawmakers away from Washington on a monthlong break, interest in the Epstein files is still running high. Trump has repeatedly tried to move past the Justice Department’s decision not to release a full accounting of the investigation, but lawmakers from both major political parties, as well as many in the Republican president’s political base, have refused to let it go.
Since Epstein’s 2019 death in a New York jail cell as he awaited trial for sex trafficking charges, conservative conspiracists have stoked theories about what information investigators gathered on Epstein — and who else could have been involved. Republican lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee nodded to that line of questioning last month by initiating the subpoenas for the Clintons, both Democrats, as well as demanding all communications between President Joe Biden's Democratic administration and the Justice Department regarding Epstein.