House Speaker Mike Johnson doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong by blocking the deciding signature on a bipartisan petition for a vote to release the Jeffrey Epstein files in full.
Speaking on CNBC Thursday morning, Johnson denied Democratic Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva’s claim that she was unable to start constituent work because she lacks a budget, an office in her district, or even a badge allowing her access to Capitol Hill. But the Louisiana Republican insisted that wouldn’t matter, anyway.
“She has computers and 16 employees, and there’s no excuse for it,” Johnson snapped.
Johnson also rejected the suggestion that he was somehow blocking the release of the government’s files on Epstein, because in his view, the files were already coming out.
“The Epstein files are being released,” Johnson claimed, pointing to the latest batch of documents obtained by the House Oversight Committee on Friday, which he said included Epstein’s financial ledgers, daily calendar, and flight logs.
“All the things people have been saying they wanted. It’s all coming out. Why? Because the House Oversight Committee has been working through this period,” Johnson said.
“These are all distractions. All distractions from the main point. They have shut the government down for political purposes, and we gotta get it reopened,” Johnson continued.
The latest release included testimony from Alex Acosta, former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, who approved a nonprosecution deal for Epstein in 2008, allowing him to avoid federal charges despite substantial evidence of sex trafficking and abuse of minors. Acosta, who had previously served as Donald Trump’s secretary of labor, defended his decision to lawmakers. “A billionaire going to jail sends a strong signal to the community that this is not, not right, that this cannot happen,” he said Friday.
Last month, Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee released excerpts of flight logs and daily schedules showing that Epstein had vacation plans with Elon Musk, held meetings with Peter Thiel and Steve Bannon, and flew around with Prince Andrew.
Previous document dumps have been more underwhelming. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee found that 97 percent of documents included in a September release of 33,000 pages had already been made public, and one journalist at the Miami Herald noted that the dump contained multiple duplicates of old reports.
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