House Republican leadership canceled Thursday votes to avoid legislative floor action related to government files involving disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) told reporters on Tuesday.
“There’s no purpose for Congress to push an administration to do something that they’re already doing,” Johnson said of the Epstein resolutions, which are supported by most House Democrats and some House Republicans. “We’re done being lectured on transparency.”
Johnson’s decision to recess the House early comes as the administration continues to wrestle with the continuing political fallout of the Epstein news cycle.
“My belief is we need the administration to have the space to do what it is doing, and if further congressional action is necessary or appropriate, then we’ll look at that,” Johnson told reporters earlier this week. “But I don’t think we’re at that point right now because we agree with the president.”
The move, which scraps previously scheduled floor action on Thursday, means House Democrats will not be able to force a vote this week on Epstein-related resolutions calling on the Justice Department to release pertinent documents. The House is now expected to recess for the summer on Wednesday afternoon.
Not all House Republicans are on board with an early recess, which followed a kerfuffle on the House Rules Committee over whether to push for floor action this week on the issue. “The American people deserve action, not excuses,” Representative Ralph Norman (R., S.C.) wrote in a Tuesday social media statement criticizing House GOP leadership’s move. “Let’s vote on it before August recess and get it DONE!!”
A handful of other House Republicans, including Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, have also urged Republicans to release more documents related to the disgraced financier. Also on Tuesday, the House Oversight Committee voted in favor of Representative Tim Burchett’s (R., Tenn.) motion to subpoena Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime Epstein associate convicted of child-sex trafficking.
White House officials have spent recent days struggling to move on from the Epstein news cycle. The president sued the Wall Street Journal’s parent company and publisher on Friday after the outlet ran a story last week alleging that in 2003, Trump signed a racy letter to Epstein that included a drawing of a naked woman. Following the report, Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to “produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval.”
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced Tuesday that he plans to meet with Maxwell “in the coming days” to discuss the Epstein case.
Bondi has been a central character in the saga involving Epstein, who committed suicide in prison in 2019 while he was awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges. After suggesting earlier this year that an Epstein client list was sitting on her desk for review, the administration published a memo insisting that no such client list exists and that no further government documents on the matter would be released.