Mike Johnson ‘Doing Everything He Can’ To Block Vote On Epstein Files

WASHINGTON ― The decision by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to keep the House of Representatives out of session during a government shutdown has a curious side effect: It’s delaying a vote on the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Johnson canceled votes last week and this week. He said the House will only return after the Senate approves a government funding bill that the House passed before the government shut down last week. So far, Senate Democrats haven’t budged in their demands for health policy changes.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said the House is actually out of session to thwart his “discharge petition” to allow a vote on the Justice Department’s investigatory files on Epstein.

“Why are we in recess? Because the day we go back into session, I have 218 votes for the discharge petition to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files,” Massie wrote Sunday on social media.

Discharge petitions allow rank-and-file lawmakers to go around party leadership to force votes. Such petitions need 218 signatures to succeed. Massie has 217, and there’s a new member waiting to be sworn in who will provide the 218th signature.

But Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.), winner of a special election to fill her late father’s seat last month, can’t be sworn in until the House reconvenes.

Johnson said Monday Grijalva will be sworn in as soon as the House returns. He called the discharge petition “moot” since the House Oversight Committee sent the Justice Department a subpoena for the Epstein material, and the Justice Department has already produced thousands of documents in response.

“The House Oversight Committee has some of the toughest bulldog Democrats and Republicans in Congress,” Johnson said Monday in an interview with MSNBC’s Ali Vitali. “They’re all working together for full transparency of the Epstein files.”

The Oversight Committee issued its subpoena following a bipartisan vote amid an uproar this summer over the administration’s refusal to make the Epstein files public. Trump’s attorney general said in February she had Epstein’s mythical “client list” on her desk; the Justice Department later announced it would be inappropriate to release any new material.

Trump was friends with Epstein for years until a falling out sometime before Epstein was first prosecuted for sex crimes in 2006. Epstein died in jail after getting indicted on additional charges in 2019.

Massie doesn’t think the Justice Department can be trusted to hand over all the Epstein material. He accused Johnson Monday of “doing everything he can, including delaying the swearing in of the most recently elected member of Congress and spreading misinformation about the legislation, to block a vote in Congress on legislation to release the Epstein files.”

Democrats and Grijalva herself have demanded Johnson swear her in during one of the several brief “pro forma” sessions the House holds even when it’s not in session. Johnson has ignored the requests.

“The delay in swearing me in is robbing the people of Southern Arizona of essential constituent services,” Grijalva said Monday in a letter to the speaker. “I am unable to hire staff, open district offices, or respond to constituent concerns.”

Even if the House approved Massie’s legislation to create a public database of the Justice Department’s Epstein documents, it would still need to pass the Senate and somehow overcome likely opposition from the president.