President Donald Trump’s administration warned Republicans Tuesday that voting to release more files on Jeffrey Epstein would be seen as an act of war.
Republican Representative Thomas Massie is leading the charge on moving for a House vote to release the Epstein files in full, following the GOP-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s lackluster release of more than 33,000 documents on the child sex offender Tuesday night, 97 percent of which had already been made public.
Representatives Massie and Ro Khanna had previously introduced a bipartisan bill in July to get the Justice Department to release the full cache of the Epstein files within a month. Then, on Tuesday, Massie filed a discharge petition.
The White House was less than pleased.
“Helping Thomas Massie and Liberal Democrats with their attention-seeking, while the DOJ is fully supporting a more comprehensive file release effort from the Oversight Committee, would be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration,” a White House official said in a statement to CNN.
Massie has already managed to secure signatures for the petition from some of the biggest firebrand Republican representatives, including Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Their support means Massie needs only two more signatures to force a vote.
“There’s a major pressure campaign from the White House right now, and also from the speaker,” Massie said on Tuesday. “But I think there are enough Republicans who are listening to their constituents and care about these victims that we’ll get the 218 signatures we need.”
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