Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna says President Donald Trump and GOP leaders are using the government shutdown to block the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
“This House is shut down because they don’t want to have the release of the Epstein files,” the California congressman told Joanna Coles, host of The Daily Beast Podcast.
He added, “Every time [Republicans] take these extraordinary measures, like shutting down the Congress—not even having votes out of fear of releasing these files—it adds to the skepticism and anger of the American public who think that there’s something rotten there.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to swear in Arizona Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, a Democrat who pledged to cast the 218th vote needed on a discharge petition that would compel a floor vote on the release of files related to the late child sex offender.
Johnson, who canceled all votes in the House this week, claims the delay is due to the House being in “pro forma” session amid the ongoing government shutdown. But Democrats have pointed out that he swore in two Republican lawmakers during a pro forma session in April.
Khanna, who filed the discharge petition with Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, also noted that Johnson on Wednesday ruled out reconvening the House to vote on a standalone bill that would ensure military service members are paid next week.
“Can you imagine this? I mean, people want to have a vote today, tomorrow to pay our troops during the shutdown. The speaker and Republican leadership were saying, no, we can’t have a vote,” Khanna, 49, said. “Why? Because Adelita Grijalva will be sworn in—218th person—and they’re going to have a vote on the Epstein files.”
When reached for comment, a spokesman for Johnson told the Daily Beast, “We will swear in Rep.-Elect Grijalva as soon as the House returns to Session when [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer, [Arizona Sen.] Mark Kelly and [Arizona Sen.] Ruben Gallego decide to open up the Government. It is custom practice in the House to swear in members when the chamber is in session.”
Johnson noted on Wednesday that Republican’s short-term funding measure, which was passed by the House on Sept. 19, would have fully covered troops’ pay.
His office requested the Daily Beast include the following from his press conference:
“Hakeem Jeffries and the House Democrats are clamoring to get back here and have another vote because some of them want to get on record and say they’re for paying the troops. We already had that vote—it’s called the CR. Every Republican and at least one Democrat had the common sense to say, of course we want the government to stay in operation. Of course we want to pay our troops and our air traffic controllers and our border patrol agents, TSA agents, and everybody else. We did have that vote. The House, I keep saying, the House did its job. We did that almost three weeks ago. And every Democrat in the House, except one, voted against it.”
Senate Democrats have refused to advance the measure unless it extends Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year.
So far, only four Republicans have signed onto the Epstein case discharge petition, and White House allies are privately pressuring them to withdraw their names, CNN reports. GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene claims a White House aide told her that pushing for the further disclosure of Epstein files would be received as a “very hostile act.”
Khanna said his push to release the files on Epstein, who allegedly sexually abused underage girls as young as 11 in his sex-trafficking ring, is about “standing up for survivors and protecting children,” rather than a political ploy to attack Trump, who long socialized with Epstein and is said to feature in the files.
He argued that Trump “could have been seen as a hero” to survivors had he committed to releasing all of the files, which many MAGA figures had long advocated for.
But the 79-year-old president has repeatedly branded calls for complete transparency on the case a Democratic “hoax.” On Monday, he left the door open to pardoning Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, after the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal against her sex-trafficking conviction.
“[Trump] has become part of the very corrupt system he railed against. He has become part of the system that is covering this up,” Khanna said.
When reached for comment by the Daily Beast, White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson called Khanna’s claim that the GOP is keeping the government closed to dodge a vote on the Epstein files “stupid” in a statement, saying, “the Democrats are the ones who shut the government down because they want to give free health care to illegal aliens.”
Undocumented immigrants are barred from receiving federally funded healthcare coverage, and Democrats’ budget proposals do not seek to make them eligible for programs like Medicaid and Medicare.
“Ro Khanna 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,” Jackson continued.
While the Justice Department has declassified some files, they were highly redacted and did not offer major revelations. Similarly, most of the 30,000 documents released by the GOP-led House Oversight Committee last month were already public.
Khanna, whose district spans much of Silicon Valley, told Coles his “sense is that there are powerful people and powerful forces that don’t want these files out.”
He argued that delays in bringing full transparency to Epstein’s case reinforces the impression that “our government has been rigged for powerful and rich forces.”
“The Epstein saga is exhibit one for a government that has been corrupted,” he said.
The post This Is the Sinister Reason for Trump’s Government Shutdown: Congressman appeared first on The Daily Beast.
