In what one representative has called an “enormous step forward” in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, the House Oversight Committee voted Wednesday to subpoena several individuals linked to the late sex offender, including billionaire Les Wexner.
Wexner — along with attorney Darren Indyke and accountant Richard Kahn, who are co-executors of Epstein’s estate — will be called to sit for depositions as part of the panel’s probe.
In a statement, Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said the subpoenas would help “deliver justice for the survivors and truth for the American people.”
“Oversight Democrats know how important it is to follow the money to identify anyone that enabled Epstein’s horrific abuses and illegal activities,” the statement added. “We are now one step closer to ending this White House cover-up.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, one of the lawmakers leading the fight to release the files in the Senate, joined MS NOW’s “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” to discuss Wednesday’s breakthrough.
The Rhode Island Democrat said the bipartisan vote highlighted the inaction from the Trump administration on the investigation into the disgraced financier.
“If the Trump administration had been the least bit serious about getting to the bottom of the Epstein scandal, this is the kind of thing that the Department of Justice and the FBI could have been looking into,” Whitehouse said.
“The tell here is that over a year later, it took Democratic pressure in the House from the minority to get a subpoena issued, rather than this being something the Department of Justice went ahead and did,” he added.
Whitehouse also spoke about the bipartisan effort in the Senate to hold the administration accountable. A group of senators has requested that the Justice Department Office of the Inspector General perform an audit of the agency’s compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required the release of all records and documents relating to its investigation.
“They came into office promising full disclosure of the Epstein files and that thousands of FBI agents were working on this,” the senator said. “So the idea that they had to start from zero and could only get 12,000 documents out once they knew that this law was going to be passed … suggests something really went wrong there.”
“What on earth happened to take this top priority of FBI Director [Kash] Patel and this top priority of Attorney General [Pam] Bondi and this top priority of President [Donald] Trump, and not be ready when the day came to actually release the documents?” the Democrat asked.
Whitehouse said the inspector general was “the person best positioned in the Department of Justice to take a look into whether this was incompetence, whether this was deliberate, whether this was misbehavior.”
You can watch Whitehouse’s full interview on “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.