President Donald Trump’s administration has been desperate to cast blame for the government shutdown onto Democrats, but one House Republican is calling out House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Representative Thomas Massie claimed on X that the real reason Congress isn’t in session is because Johnson hopes to fend off a floor vote to release the government’s complete files on Jeffrey Epstein.
“The government is shutdown, but the House refuses to go back in session. Why are we in recess? Because the day we go back into session, I have 218 votes for the discharge petition to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files,” Massie wrote on X Sunday afternoon, adding that Johnson “doesn’t want that to be the news.”
The following day, the Kentucky Republican responded to Johnson’s comments on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, where the speaker claimed that he was in favor of “maximum disclosure” of the so-called Epstein files. “I want every page of this out,” Johnson said Monday morning, while insisting that Trump couldn’t possibly be implicated by the materials.
But Massie wasn’t convinced. “Contrary to what he says, @SpeakerJohnson is doing everything he can, including delaying the swearing in of the most recently elected member of Congress and spreading misinformation about the legislation, to block a vote in Congress on legislation to release the Epstein files,” he wrote Monday afternoon.
As the shutdown deadline loomed last week, Johnson canceled votes in order to pressure Senate Democrats into acceding to a Republican stopgap funding measure, and postponed the swearing-in of Democratic Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, who is poised to provide the deciding signature on Massie and Democratic Representative Ro Khanna’s petition for a vote. (Notably, the Louisiana Republican has previously sworn in special election winners during pro forma sessions, but he has refused to do so with Grijalva.)
Other Republicans who signed Massie’s petition didn’t seem quite on the same page as their contrarian counterpart. Last week, Representative Nancy Mace said that she’d refuse to take her paycheck during the so-called “Schumer Shutdown,” while Representative Lauren Boebert said the whole thing was a ploy by Democrats so they’d have something to write in their fundraising emails. Six days into the shutdown, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene didn’t seem to have a clue what the stakes of closing the government actually were.
The post GOPer Slams Mike Johnson for Shutting Down Government to Dodge Epstein appeared first on New Republic.
