September special elections can help secure enough House votes for releasing Epstein files

A discharge petition to force a House vote directing the Justice Department to release its files on the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case is poised to earn enough signatures if two Democrats win special elections to Congress this month.

The petition needs 218 signatures to succeed and had 215 as of early Monday afternoon.

The effort had lost momentum with most Republicans refusing to sign on as a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigation into the Epstein case plays out. The panel has already obtained and released more than 34,000 pages of documents, with more expected to come as soon as this week.

But no more Republican signatures will be needed if Democrats win special elections this month for House seats in Virginia and Arizona left vacant after the deaths of Reps. Gerald E. Connolly and Raúl Grijalva.

All current House Democrats have signed the discharge petition except for California Rep. Eric Swalwell, who was not in Washington last week after his mother unexpectedly died. He said he plans to sign the petition as soon as he returns. 

Once Mr. Swalwell signs, the petition will be two signatures short.

Rep. Ro Khanna, California Democrat, who teamed up on the discharge petition with Rep. Thomas Massie, Kentucky Republican, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that the two Democrats who are expected to win the Virginia and Arizona special elections will provide the final two signatures. 

“Two Democrats are going to be joining, and they are both committed to signing it. That’s going to happen by the end of September,” Mr. Khanna said. 

Those Democrats are James Walkinshaw, a Fairfax County supervisor who is running to replace Connolly in a special election on Tuesday and Adelita Grijalva who is vying to replace her father in a Sept. 23 special election. 

Mr. Walkinshaw and Ms. Grijalva are heavily favored to win against their GOP opponents in districts that favor Democrats.

“We cannot ignore the calls from these survivors,” Mr. Walkinshaw said in an X post last week after Epstein victims shared their stories on Capitol Hill and called for lawmakers to act. “If elected, I will sign the Epstein Files discharge petition to force a vote on releasing the files.”

The Washington Times has reached out to Ms. Grijalva’s campaign for comment. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson and fellow GOP leaders are opposed to the discharge petition, which would take away their control of the House floor, and argue the need for it is “moot” in light of the Oversight investigation.

Only four Republicans have signed the discharge petition: Mr. Massie and Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

Any one of them could remove their name as a signatory to prevent the discharge petition from succeeding, but they’ve not signaled a willingness to do so.

“These women have been fighting for 30 years for justice, and they still don’t have any,” Ms. Mace said. “And the least we could do is disclose that information in those files.”

President Trump has cited the “thousands of pages of documents” that have already been released as he dismissed the broader focus on the Epstein files as “a Democrat hoax.”

“They’re trying to get people to talk about something that’s totally irrelevant to the success we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president,” he said.

Mr. Massie, who appeared alongside Mr. Khanna on ABC’s “This Week,” said Mr. Trump is against releasing the files because “it’s going to be embarrassing to some of the billionaires, some of the donors who are politically connected to his campaign.” 

“I also think Democrats are going to be implicated in this. Democrat donors. And when you get to the billionaire level, a lot of these folks give to both parties anyway,” he said. “There are probably intelligence ties to our CIA, and maybe to other foreign intelligence. And the American people would be shocked, I think, to know that our intelligence agency was working with a pedophile who was running a sex trafficking ring.”

The White House has been working to prevent Republicans from signing onto the discharge petition.

“Helping Thomas Massie and Liberal Democrats with their attention-seeking, while the DOJ is fully supporting a more comprehensive file release effort from the Oversight Committee, would be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration,” a White House official said.

Ms. Greene took issue with that characterization last week. She said planned to speak with Mr. Trump about her conversations with the Epstein victims. 

“The hostile act has been against these women for so many years now,” she said. “The hostile act is covering up for Jeffrey Epstein and everyone else that’s been involved in this.”