The House on Tuesday defeated an attempt to censure Delegate Stacey Plaskett, Democrat of the Virgin Islands, for exchanging text messages with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during a congressional hearing.
The move, which also sought to remove her from the Intelligence Committee, came just after both chambers of Congress moved quickly and with almost no dissent to push through legislation directing the Justice Department to release the Epstein files, a measure that Republicans had initially fought to kill, and as President Trump and G.O.P. lawmakers were toiling to shift the focus to Democrats’ interactions with the disgraced financier.
The 214-209 vote was mostly along party lines. No Democrat supported the effort, though Representative Marcy Kaptur, Democrat of Ohio, voted ‘present.’ Three Republicans, Representatives Lance Gooden of Texas, Andrew Garbarino of New York and David Joyce of Ohio voted against the measure. Another three Republicans voted “present,” withholding their support from the G.O.P.-led attempt to formally reprimand Ms. Plaskett.
The Republican push to punish Ms. Plaskett began after thousands of documents released last week by the House Oversight Committee included copies of text messages she exchanged with Mr. Epstein just before she was to question Michael Cohen, a former friend of Mr. Epstein’s, during a 2019 congressional hearing.
Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina, the Republican leading the effort, accused Ms. Plaskett of “coordinating” her questioning with Mr. Epstein and said “we cannot pretend this didn’t happen.”
His resolution accused her of “inappropriate coordination” with Mr. Epstein, saying she had been “actively coached” by him during the hearing and was “secretly collaborating” with him to advance “partisan attacks.”
In a speech on Tuesday, Ms. Plaskett acknowledged that she had texted with Mr. Epstein, who she said was a constituent at the time as a Virgin Islands resident, but she forcefully rejected the idea that she had engaged in any wrongdoing. She said that it was “not public knowledge at that time that he was under federal investigation” and that he was merely “sharing information with me.”
The text exchange, first reported by The Washington Post, shows that Mr. Epstein reached out to Ms. Plaskett before the hearing began and corresponded with her throughout the day.
At one point during the session, hours before Ms. Plaskett began her turn to ask questions of Mr. Cohen, Mr. Epstein messaged her saying that Mr. Cohen has “opened the door to questions re who are the other henchmen at trump org.” To which she replied, “Yup. Very aware and waiting my turn.”
Republicans argue the messages indicate that she took cues from Mr. Epstein in real time. But Ms. Plaskett, a former prosecutor who served as a Democratic manager in Mr. Trump’s 2021 impeachment trial, said nobody directed her questioning.
“Let me tell you something: I don’t need to get advice on how to question anybody from any individual,” she said on the House floor on Tuesday.
Democrats speaking in defense of Ms. Plaskett said that the exchange amounted to nothing more than unsolicited messages and said that there was no indication that her questions were influenced by Mr. Epstein.
They argued that the effort to punish her was meant to distract from the mounting pressure on Mr. Trump and the Justice Department to release all of its investigative documents related to Mr. Epstein, who died in prison in 2019, and fully account for his network and actions.
“We insist on complete, full disclosure,” said Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee. “This resolution has nothing to do with that. This seems to me one more pathetic effort to distract and divert attention.”
Formal congressional censures, the most serious penalty against a sitting member before expulsion, were once exceedingly rare but have become far more commonplace in recent years as lawmakers in both parties routinely target each other with partisan rebukes. In act of apparent retaliation against the Republican-led effort, Representative Yvette Clarke, Democrat of New York, introduced a censure aimed at Representative Cory Mills, Republican of Florida, hours before the vote on Ms. Plaskett’s censure. Her effort would also seek to remove Mr. Mills from his committee position on the Armed Services Panel.
Megan Mineiro is a Times congressional reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early-career journalists.
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