House Speaker Mike Johnson can’t seem to shake accusations that he is refusing to swear in a Democratic representative-elect in an attempt to block a vote on the Epstein files.
The MAGA loyalist insisted his decision not to seat Rep.-Elect Adelita Grijalva, who won a Sept. 23 special election in Arizona to fill her late father’s seat, “has zero to do with Epstein.”
Grijalva has vowed to provide the decisive 218th signature on a petition to force a vote on a bill instructing the Department of Justice to release its investigative files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was close friends for years with President Donald Trump.
Johnson has refused to call a vote on the bill, which Trump opposes, but the bipartisan discharge petition would bypass party leadership and bring the bill to the floor.
As a result, Democrats have accused Johnson of delaying Grijalva’s swearing-in over the Epstein vote, which he denies.
“We’re going to give her the oath as soon as we return to legislative session. That is the rules of the House. I am following the Pelosi precedent,” he told Fox Business Network on Tuesday.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi waited 25 days to swear in Republican Rep. Julia Letlow when she won a special election in 2021, he argued. She also waited more than 20 days to swear in two representatives who were elected during the August recess in 2022.
Those circumstances, however, were far different, as Johnson was reminded during an awkward interview over the weekend with ABC’s Jonathan Karl.
Letlow had asked to be sworn in on that date, and Johnson himself swore in GOP Reps. Randy Fine and Jimmy Patronis, while the House was out of session in April.
“What about the Johnson precedent?” Karl asked the speaker.
He has also offered half-baked explanations about Grijalva’s family not being in town and offered patronizing takes about how the 54-year-old Grijalva “doesn’t know how it works around here.”
The speaker has refused to call the House into session during the government shutdown, even though lawmakers are supposed to be negotiating a budget bill that was due Sept. 30.
In the meantime, the Senate is in session and has held nearly a dozen votes on the Republican spending plan, which Democrats have refused to back unless it rolls back GOP cuts to Medicaid and extends tax credits to keep the price of health insurance from skyrocketing under the Affordable Care Act.
Even without calling a regular legislative session, Johnson could hold a pro forma session, a brief hearing convened for constitutional purposes to swear her in.
“The Epstein files are being released,” Johnson told Fox Business. “There’s 43,000 pages now out there, you have the flight logs, the financial ledgers, the phone logs, and the daily calendar of Epstein now that are out there, names are being released, all that is happening. So that’s a red herring.”
In September, the House Oversight Committee released 33,000 pages of documents. The vast majority of the information, however, was already in the public domain.
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