Former Attorney General Bill Barr arrived to appear before House investigators on Monday as part of the House GOP’s probe into Jeffrey Epstein.
He was one of the many officials subpoenaed by House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., earlier this month to appear before the panel and is part of a broader, bipartisan push in the House to uncover more information on the late financier and convicted pedophile.
‘We’re very excited. This will be our first deposition in the bipartisan investigation into the entire Epstein Island saga, so we’ve got a lot of questions for former Attorney General Barr,’ Comer told reporters shortly before the closed-door deposition began.
‘I appreciate his willingness to come in, and hopefully this will be the first of many.’
The Kentucky Republican also hinted the scope of Monday’s questioning could go beyond Epstein, but maintained the late pedophile would be his main focus.
‘The subpoena was just for Epstein. There are some other things that I’m curious about, so we’ll see how it goes,’ Comer said in response to a question by Fox News Digital. ‘But obviously the purpose of this deposition is on Epstein.’
Two Democrats on the committee, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, and Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., were also witnessed entering the room by Fox News Digital.
Barr served as attorney general during President Donald Trump’s first term and helmed the Justice Department when Epstein was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City after being indicted on charges of sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors.
He became embroiled in investigations into Epstein’s death in August 2019 in the immediate aftermath, given that the Department of Justice (DOJ) oversees the Bureau of Prisons.
‘I can understand people who immediately, whose minds went to sort of the worst-case scenario because it was a perfect storm of screw-ups,’ Barr told the AP in 2019.
Barr arrived for his closed-door hearing just after 9 a.m. on Monday, and told reporters the ‘early bird gets the worm’ before beginning his testimony.
Flash forward over six years later, and interest in the case, particularly over the Trump administration’s handling of it, has reignited a public and political firestorm.
The renewed interest stemmed from a memo from the FBI released last month when the agency revealed it would not release new documents from the case and that their review of it was closed.
In the memo, the FBI found there was ‘no incriminating ‘client list,’’ nor was there ‘credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions.’
‘We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties,’ the agency stated.
Though Barr was a prominent figure at the time, he is not the main target of Comer and the committee. Several others, including former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, were also subpoenaed by Comer to appear before the committee.
‘Everybody in America wants to know what went on in Epstein Island, and we’ve all heard reports that Bill Clinton was a frequent visitor there, so he’s a prime suspect to be deposed by the House Oversight Committee,’ Comer told Newsmax.
Comer’s decision to subpoena the Barr and the Clintons, along with former FBI directors James Comey and Robert Mueller, ex-Attorneys General Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, Jeff Sessions, and Alberto Gonzales, came after the Oversight panel voted to compel people with possible links to Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former associate, to testify.
Along with the list of former officials, Comer also subpoenaed the DOJ for records related to Epstein’s case.
The deadline for those files is Aug. 19, but Comer did not say whether that will materialize by then when asked by reporters on Monday.
‘You could imagine how many documents there are,’ Comer said. ‘I think we’ll receive the documents very soon. They’re compiling everything together, I think. We’re working together in a good faith effort and everything’s coming along.’