The man leading Congress’s most closely watched investigation on Epstein is already worried that nobody will buy its final product.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who has spent months digging through Jeffrey Epstein’s world, is openly fretting that his long promised report on the late sex offender will land with a thud.
“I fear the report will be like the Warren Report,” Comer told Politico, invoking the 1964 investigation into John F. Kennedy’s assassination that helped fuel decades of conspiracy theories instead of ending them. “Nobody will ever believe it.”
“There’s so many conspiracy theories,” he added, saying that was a big part of why he “wasn’t excited about doing the investigation” in the first place. Comer even admitted he has not firmly committed to releasing a final report at all, saying only that it will happen “eventually, I would assume.”
That is a remarkable confession from the powerful chair of the House Oversight Committee, who has been billing his Epstein work as a sweeping push for transparency. Since July, Comer has overseen the release of Epstein’s bizarre 50th birthday book and tens of thousands of pages from the financier’s estate files, while his committee has hauled in federal agencies and banks for records.
According to Comer’s own office, the committee has now posted more than 65,000 pages of documents it has received, issued 13 subpoenas, and conducted interviews with key witnesses, including former officials involved in earlier federal probes of Epstein. Those files range from financial records to internal government correspondence, and they are supposed to help answer lingering questions about Epstein’s sex trafficking operation, the government’s failures, and who in power may have enabled him.
Comer has also moved to drag some of Epstein’s most famous associates into the spotlight. In a move widely seen as both high stakes and highly political, he announced plans to subpoena former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for in person depositions over their ties to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
On paper, it looks like a classic Washington power investigation: big personalities, massive document dumps, and a new law, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, that forces the Justice Department to release all unclassified Epstein files within 30 days. President Trump signed the bill in November, and DOJ now faces a tight deadline to put the material online.
But Comer’s own comments suggest he fears the country is too cynical, and the record too messy, for any official narrative to stick. If the report clears certain figures, conspiracy minded critics will say it is a whitewash. If it points toward wrongdoing without airtight proof, it risks being dismissed as a political hit job. By comparing his yet to be released work to the Warren Report, he is essentially conceding that millions of Americans will walk away unconvinced no matter what he publishes.
Victims’ advocates are already uneasy about how the committee is proceeding. Comer has tasked female members of the Oversight Committee with meeting Epstein survivors to help identify powerful accomplices, a step one attorney criticized as dumping work back onto people who have already endured enough. “Why are we putting the burden on them?” lawyer Jennifer Freeman asked.
At the same time, Comer, a staunch Trump ally, has downplayed the damage the investigation could do to Trump himself, even as documents and media reporting continue to highlight Trump’s long social history with Epstein. Appearing tough on Epstein while protecting Trump, will not settle critics who already assume the fix is in.
All of this feeds the very cynicism Comer says he is worried about. The more the committee leaks and spars in public, the easier it is for people to see the Epstein probe as just another front in the endless partisan war, not a straight hunt for the truth.
