President Donald Trump’s allies have launched a last-minute bid to stop a group of bipartisan lawmakers from forcing a House vote on the release of the government’s files in the Jeffrey Epstein case.
As soon as Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva—who prevailed in a special election in Arizona—is sworn in, a House resolution brought by Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna will have the 218 signatures needed to compel a vote on the issue.
With Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson refusing to call a vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act—which the president opposes—Republican Massie and Democrat Khanna introduced a discharge petition earlier this month that would bypass party leadership and bring the bill to the floor.
Now that they’re just days away from collecting the decisive signature, Republican congressional leaders and White House allies have ramped up efforts to thwart the resolution, CNN reported.
Their exact strategy is not yet clear, but one source said that some of the GOP lawmakers who signed the petition are being pressured to withdraw their names, according to CNN.
In a statement to the Daily Beast, White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson said, “Democrats and the media knew about Epstein and his victims for years and did nothing to help them while President Trump was calling for transparency, and is now delivering on it with thousands of pages of documents as part of the ongoing Oversight investigation.”
Three of Trump’s staunch allies—Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Nancy Mace—joined Massie and House Democrats in signing the discharge petition.
Massie, who is often a thorn in the president’s side, told Semafor’s Burgess Everett on Wednesday night that his Republican co-signers were under “tremendous pressure” to withdraw but were all three “standing strong.”
Earlier this month, Mace left a closed-door meeting with Epstein’s survivors in tears. Boebert told CNN last week that she would not remove her name from the petition.
The last time Johnson was confronted with a discharge petition—which was ultimately withdrawn—he tried to stop it by going through the House Rules Committee. This time, the committee’s Republicans say they will not help Johnson kill the vote, according to CNN.
The bill would instruct the Department of Justice to release all of its investigative files on Epstein, who was found dead in his jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking.
Although officials concluded the disgraced financier died by suicide, several MAGA factions have argued that he was murdered in his cell to protect his powerful clients.
Despite promising to release the files during his re-election bid, the president—who was friends with Epstein for years—has since dismissed the effort as a Democrat-led “hoax” designed to distract from what he argues are “the most successful eight months of any president ever.”
Last week, Massie told CNN that the House could vote on his Epstein bill as soon as mid-October. Once the needed signatures are secured, Massie must wait at least seven legislative days to bring the bill to the floor.
House leaders can also wait two legislative days before putting it to a vote. The bill is likely to face an uphill battle in the Senate if it clears the House, but it will force Republicans to go on record over the Epstein files.
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