Topline
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said he will try to amass enough support to force a vote on the release of the remaining files related to the investigations into Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, as lawmakers in both parties renew a push for their disclosure as Congress returns from recess Tuesday.
Massie, who co-sponsored the bill with Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said he planned to file the bill around 2 p.m. EDT on Tuesday and start the process of collecting signatures needed to force a vote.
Massie plans to use a procedural tool called a discharge petition to bypass congressional leadership and force a floor vote if a majority of members sign on.
Massie’s bill, titled the Epstein Files Transparency Act, directs the Justice Department, FBI and several U.S. attorney’s offices to hand over files in a downloadable form if the records mention individuals, “corporate, nonprofit, academic, or governmental” entities or travel records related to Epstein and Maxwell.
It also instructs the Justice Department to hand over internal communications about the investigations and prosecutions, as well as any conversations about “the destruction, deletion, alteration, misplacement, or concealment of documents, recordings, or electronic data.”
Khanna told “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the pair had every Democrat and 12 Republicans committed to signing the petition—and only six Republicans are needed to meet the 218 required to bring the bill to the House floor.
Meanwhile, members of Congress, including leadership from the House Oversight Committee, are reportedly attending a closed-door meeting Tuesday afternoon with some of Epstein’s victims before Massie and Khanna host a press conference with victims Wednesday.
It’s still unclear if Massie can muster up enough Republican support in the House. At least one of the bill’s Republican co-sponsors, Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., said the effort has lost “momentum” and he will no longer support the measure he signed on to in July. “I support releasing whatever we can but not forcing by discharge,” Van Drew told CNN. If Massie’s bill gets 218 signatures, lawmakers must wait seven legislative days before attempting to schedule a floor vote, according to the House Rules Committee. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is then required to schedule a floor vote within two legislative days. Even if Massie’s bill passes the House, for it to actually result in any release it would next need to be passed by the Republican-controlled Senate and then signed into law by President Donald Trump, who has in recent months begun criticizing the efforts to release Epstein files as a “Democrat hoax.”
Massie and Khanna scheduled a press conference for 10:30 a.m. EDT on Wednesday on the steps of the Capitol building with 10 of Epstein’s alleged victims one day after their closed-door meeting. Few details have been given about who is scheduled to appear at the press conference Wednesday, but Khanna told “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker many of them “have never spoken out before,” later adding “they will be telling their story, and they will be saying clearly to the American public that they want the release of the Epstein files for full closure on this matter.”
Massie and Khanna’s new push to release the Epstein files comes as the House Oversight Committee conducts its own investigation into the Epstein files after the Trump administration’s abrupt end to releases sparked outcry from both parties. The Oversight Committee issued subpoenas to the Justice Department and began receiving files in August, but Democrats on the committee quickly criticized the nature of the materials the Justice Department was handing over. According to Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the Democrats’ ranking member on the committee, the “overwhelming majority” of the tens of thousands of files handed over contained no new information or were already public.
On Monday morning, another Epstein-related bill was added to the list of items Congress could vote on during this session. The short, four-page House resolution calls on the Oversight Committee to continue its investigation into the “possible mismanagement of the Federal government’s investigation of Mr. Jeffrey Epstein and Ms. Ghislaine Maxwell.” In a post on X, Massie criticized this effort, identifying it as a “meaningless vote to provide political cover for those members who don’t support our bipartisan legislation.”