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A Republican congressman who’s spearheading the push on the fitting for the Trump administration to launch everything of the federal authorities’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein made it clear on Thursday that it will likely be high on the agenda as Congress returns.
Thomas Massie, a Kentucky consultant with a historical past of clashing with the president and his personal occasion, wrote on X that he deliberate to file a discharge petition forcing a vote on the matter within the Home of Representatives on Tuesday, when the Home gavels again into session.
Lawmakers spent the month of August on their yearly summer time recess, throughout which many members returned dwelling to their districts to satisfy with constituents. That recess was known as early, by Speaker Mike Johnson, to dam Massie from submitting his petition, in late July.
“I’m in DC and I’ll file the discharge petition as we speak, Sept 2nd, at roughly 2pm when Congress formally returns from the August recess,” Massie posted. “At that time we will start accumulating the 218 signatures essential to drive a vote on binding laws to launch the Epstein recordsdata.”
Johnson beforehand known as the transfer by Massie a “charade”.
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Massie is joined in main the petition by Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman from California. Because the Home known as recess in July, the 2 pledged to relitigate the problem as soon as Congress returned.
GOP management is unlikely to flee an embarassing vote on the problem within the days forward if public curiosity within the investigation retains any of the identical efficiency it exhibited earlier in the summertime.
Johnson was concurrently dealing with efforts by Democrats to drive votes on Epstein-related amendments within the Guidelines Committee, in addition to efforts by the Home Oversight Committee to acquire the recordsdata — a uncommon space the place the Speaker has been pressured to interrupt from Donald Trump and help requires the recordsdata to be launched to the Home’s high investigative physique.
The president, in the meantime, has furiously labeled the investigation a “hoax” in an try to maneuver his base off the problem. In the meantime, there are numerous clips of high members of his administration, together with Vice President JD Vance, remarking that the recordsdata must be launched if and after they entered authorities.
Trump’s rationalization additionally clashes badly with an effort by his personal deputies on the Division of Justice and FBI to publicize the investigation and the Trump administration’s supposed transparency round it. Pam Bondi, the lawyer normal, invited conservative influencers and MAGAworld operatives like Jack Posobiec to the White Home earlier this 12 months, the place the group acquired massive, flashy folders declaring the contents to be “section one” of the Trump administration’s Epstein-related releases.
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Part two by no means occurred.
In early July, the DOJ turned hypothesis across the adminsitration’s delays into full-blown conspiratorial accusations when the company launched a memo with the FBI claiming that the Epstein “consumer record” of the convicted intercourse offender’s alleged accomplices didn’t exist. The companies additional said that they had been closing the guide on releasing proof from the investigation.
The announcement enraged followers of the case, who’ve lengthy speculated that proof exists tying the billionaire financier’s crimes to among the many highly effective and influential individuals and establishments with whom he cultivated relationships over his life — together with President Donald Trump, and former President Invoice Clinton.
Reporting from the Wall Avenue Journal subsequently revealed that the DOJ knowledgeable the president that his title got here up a number of occasions throughout a evaluation of the investigation recordsdata, although there was no direct assertion of wrongdoing involving Trump. Individually, the outlet reported that the president penned a message for Epstein’s fiftieth birthday card containing a sexually suggestive drawing and a message suggesting the boys shared “secrets and techniques.”
The president furiously denied the Journal’s reporting and sued the paper and its homeowners for $10 billion.
