Republicans Break Ranks Against Trump in Epstein Vote Mutiny

The effort to force a vote in the House to release the Jeffrey Epstein files hit a major milestone on Wednesday and could soon open the floodgates to multiple Republicans breaking ranks and voting to release all the documents.

Arizona Rep. Adelita Grijalva was sworn into Congress on Wednesday and immediately provided the final signature on the discharge petition to force a vote in the House to release the files.

It lays the groundwork for a full vote to be held in the House by early December.

And multiple Republicans have already indicated they would vote to release the files even if they didn’t sign the petition to force that vote.

Retiring Rep. Don Bacon, along with Reps. Warren Davidson and Eli Crane are among those who have hinted they will buck party leadership and vote to release the files.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna predicted “40 to 50″ House Republicans could vote with Democrats despite pushback from the White House.

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie and Khanna introduced the bipartisan discharge petition in early September.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (left), Rep. Thomas Massie (center), and Rep. Ro Khanna (right) attend a news conference with alleged victims of disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein outside the U.S. Capitol on September 03, 2025 after Massie and Khanna introduced the Epstein List Transparency Act to force the federal government to release all unclassified records from the cases of Epstein and his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell. — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (left), Rep. Thomas Massie (center), and Rep. Ro Khanna (right) attend a news conference with alleged victims of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein on September 03, 2025 after Massie and Khanna introduced the Epstein List Transparency Act to force the federal government to release all unclassified records from the Epstein cases amid pushback from the Trump administration. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Every single House Democrat along with four House Republicans, including Massie, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Rep. Nancy Mace and Rep. Lauren Boebert all signed on back in September, but it remained short one signature.

Grijalva’s swearing in comes seven weeks after she won a special election to fill the seat left vacant since her father Rep. Raul Grijalva passed away in March.

Democrats had accused House Speaker Mike Johnson of delaying her swearing-in in an attempt to delay the Epstein discharge petition from receiving the necessary 218 signatures to force a vote.

Arizona Rep. Adelita Grijalva being sworn in by Speaker Mike Johnson on the floor of the House on Wednesday. CSPAN

Johnson had refused to seat her while the House was on its eight week recess during the government shutdown, but he swore her in on Wednesday in the House chamber.

He has repeatedly denied that the delay had anything to do with the Epstein discharge petition, but Grijalva’s stint as congresswoman-elect for 50 days was the longest in at least a century.

Speaking on the House floor after being sworn in, Grijalva slammed having to wait so long and said she would sign the discharge petition “right now” to release the files as lawmakers in the chamber cheered.

“Justice cannot wait another day,” she declared.

Ahead of Grijalva’s swearing in, Trump attempted to put the screws on Republicans who signed the discharge petition as the administration has pushed back on the full files being released.

It was also reported by The New York Times that Trump personally called Boebert on Tuesday and attempted to reach Mace by phone in an attempt to get them to remove their names from the petition. Boebert even attended a meeting at the White House about the Epstein files on Wednesday. However, the efforts appear to have been unsuccessful.

Grijalva’s signature sets off a series of steps which will force a vote in the House to release all the Epstein files in December.

A discharge petition is a rarely used mechanism that allows the House to bypass majority party leadership and hold the vote that Donald Trump and Johnson had so desperately been trying to avoid.

Reaching the necessary signatures will trigger a countdown of seven legislative days before the bill can hit the House floor. After that, Johnson will have two days to schedule the vote, putting the likely timeline for the vote after the Thanksgiving recess in early December.

While some Senate Republicans have called for more information on the Epstein investigation to be released, GOP leadership has not committed to holding a vote to release all the files should the bill pass in the House.

The move comes as Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released bombshell emails given to them by the Epstein estate in response to a subpoena.

The convicted sex offender wrote in 2011 that Trump spent hours at his house with an Epstein victim. In a 2019 email, Epstein wrote “of course” Trump knew about the girls and had asked accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell to stop.

Trump has long denied any criminal wrongdoing in connection to Epstein and Maxwell, but the emails raise more questions about their long-known association and what he knew about Epstein’s activities.

Trump and Epstein were once very good friends. Epstein died in 2019 while in jail on charges of sex trafficking minors. Davidoff Studios Photography/Getty Images

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee accused Democrats of cherrypicking details to release and redacting the victim’s name and trying to create a “fake narrative to slander President Trump.”

According to them, the victim was Virginia Giuffre, who had previously said she never witnessed wrongdoing by Trump. Guiffre passed away in April, but her family has continued to call for the release of information.

Trump slammed the Epstein developments on Wednesday afternoon as a Democrats’ hoax in a post on social media.

He frantically urged that there should be no “deflections to Epstein or anything else” and claimed only a “very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap.”

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