The House voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to force the Justice Department to release all the files it has from investigating Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking crimes.
The Senate quickly followed suit, approving a motion to pass the measure by unanimous consent as soon as it was formally received from the House.
The House voted 427-1 after a bipartisan duo, Reps. Thomas Massie, Kentucky Republican, and Ro Khanna, California Democrat, led a discharge petition to gather signatures from a majority of the House and force a vote against Republican leaders’ wishes.
“Because survivors spoke up, because of their courage, the truth is finally going to come out,” Mr. Khanna said. “And when it comes out, this country is really going to have a moral reckoning: How did we allow this to happen?”
President Trump halted his opposition to the effort this week and announced that he would sign the bill, allowing Republicans to support the measure.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, opposed the discharge petition but ultimately voted for the bill despite his concerns that it was drafted in a “haphazard” way.
SEE ALSO: Specter of long-held conspiracy theories looms over House vote on Epstein files
He said he had spoken with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican, about amending the measure in the upper chamber to include more protections for victims, among other legal guardrails.
Mr. Thune told reporters Monday that changes were not in the cards as he was “hotlining” the bill to see whether any senators would object to passing it by unanimous consent.
“When a bill passes the House 427-1 and the president has said he’d sign it into law, I’m not sure that there’s going to be a need for, or a desire for, an amendment process over here,” he said.
No senator objected to the hotline, and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, offered the unanimous consent motion to pass the bill.
“This isn’t about Democrats versus Republicans or about Congress versus the president,” Mr. Schumer said. “This is about giving the American people the transparency they’ve been crying for. This is about holding accountable all the people in Jeffrey Epstein’s circle who raped, groomed, targeted and enabled the abuse of hundreds of girls for years and years.”
Mr. Khanna, Mr. Massie and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who signed their petition, held a press conference before the vote with several of Epstein’s victims who wanted all the files released so others involved in the sex trafficking scheme or covering it up can be held accountable.
“This is not an issue of a few corrupt Democrats or a few corrupt Republicans,” said Annie Farmer, one of the victims whose sister was also abused and reported Epstein to the FBI in 1996. “This is a case of institutional betrayal. Because these crimes were not properly investigated, so many more girls and women were harmed.”
The survivors and the lawmakers behind the discharge petition waited months for the show of broad support for transparency in the Epstein case. Only Rep. Clay Higgins, Louisiana Republican, voted no.
Four Republicans — Mr. Massie, Ms. Greene and Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Nancy Mace of South Carolina — had signed the discharge petition, with all House Democrats, to force the vote.
Some Republicans who voted for the measure voiced hesitation. They said the legislation did not provide enough protection for the victims and people who may be named in the files but were not ultimately implicated in Epstein’s crimes, among other legal guardrails.
“I want anybody associated with this mess to rot in hell,” said Rep. Chip Roy, Texas Republican. “But I also want to make sure that we, the people, are protecting people who deserve to be protected, rather than politically risking and endangering them.”
Mr. Johnson opposed Mr. Massie’s and Mr. Khanna’s discharge petition for months. He said it was made moot by a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigation into the matter.
The oversight committee subpoenaed the Justice Department and the Epstein estate and released tens of thousands of documents over the past few months. The more revealing documents have come from the estate. Many of the documents the Justice Department provided had previously been made public.
Although Mr. Johnson said he would prefer that the committee investigation take precedence over the legislation, he and other Republicans did not want to oppose it once Mr. Massie and Mr. Khanna secured enough signatures to force a vote.
“None of us want to go on record and in any way be accused of not being for maximum transparency,” the speaker said.
Democrats have suggested that the Epstein files could implicate Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.
Mr. Massie said Mr. Trump is likely innocent but is trying to protect friends and donors.
“This is a complete and total failure of the justice system, as the survivors have witnessed,” he said. “It incriminates the FBI. It incriminates our intelligence agencies. It incriminates police departments.”
Mr. Trump has long referred to the effort to release the Epstein files as a “hoax” orchestrated by Democrats to distract from his administration’s accomplishments. On Sunday night, he gave Republicans his blessing to vote for the legislation.
“House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown,’” he said on social media.
Many Republicans planned to vote for releasing the Epstein files before Mr. Trump’s reversal, but his support helped move some who were on the fence.
Rep. Andy Harris, Maryland Republican, said he still shared Mr. Johnson’s concerns that the measure did not adequately protect victims’ identities from being disclosed, but he added that the president’s approval for releasing the files was one factor that changed his mind.
Although the resulting vote was nearly unanimous, the fight over releasing the Epstein files “has ripped MAGA apart,” Ms. Greene said.
Over the weekend, Mr. Trump withdrew his endorsement of Ms. Greene, who was once considered one of his closest allies.
Ms. Greene lamented that the president called her a “traitor” for standing with Epstein’s victims.
“I want to see every single name released so that these women don’t have to live in fear and intimidation, which is something I’ve had a small taste of in just the past few days, just a small taste. They’ve been living it for years,” she said. “But the real test will be, will the Department of Justice release the files, or will it all remain tied up in investigations?”
The Justice Department, under instruction from Mr. Trump, has opened an investigation into Epstein’s ties with top Democrats such as former President Bill Clinton and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers.
Mr. Massie and others have suggested that releasing the files may be a ploy, as the Justice Department can legally withhold any information that would jeopardize an ongoing investigation.
“There are 1,000 survivors. They can’t open enough investigations to cover up everything that’s in these files,” Mr. Massie said. “It’s true they can try to protect a few certain people or a few certain companies, but those investigations will eventually end.”
Haley Robson, one of Epstein’s victims, said she is grateful that Mr. Trump plans to sign the bill, but she remains “skeptical of what the agenda is” behind his reversal.
“I am traumatized. I am not stupid,” she said.
Jena-Lisa Jones, another victim, said she voted for Mr. Trump, but his behavior on the Epstein matter “has been a national embarrassment.”
“It is time to take the honest moral ground and support the release of these files, not to weaponize pieces of the files against random political enemies that did nothing wrong, but to understand who Epstein’s friends were, who covered for him, what financial institutions allowed his trafficking to continue [and] who knew what he was doing, but was too much of a coward to do anything about it,” she said.
• Lindsey McPherson can be reached at lmcpherson@washingtontimes.com.
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