The White House is extremely frustrated by Republican support for a Jeffrey Epstein-related discharge petition.
Thought the Epstein news cycle was over? Think again.
On Tuesday, Democrat-elect Adelita Grijalva won a special election in Arizona. Her forthcoming swearing-in ceremony means Representatives Thomas Massie (R., Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D., Calif.) will soon reach the 218 signatory threshold necessary to trigger floor consideration of their Jeffrey Epstein-related discharge petition on legislation that would force the Justice Department to release all unclassified records, flight logs, and investigative materials relating to the deceased financier and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. The petition currently has 217 signatories in the House, all but four of them Democrats.
The White House is extremely frustrated by Republican support for this petition. Massie’s support is not surprising, given his endorsement of Ron DeSantis in the 2024 presidential primary, opposition to this year’s reconciliation bill, and general obstruction of the House GOP’s legislative agenda over the years.
But as National Review reported earlier this month, the White House is ramping up pressure on his three Republican co-signatories — Representatives Lauren Boebert (R., Colo.), Nancy Mace (R., S.C), and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) — none of whom are satisfied by the Epstein-related documents that have been publicly released thus far. A source told National Review this week that the White House has made clear to some of these female representatives that administration officials will put those political threats into overdrive if they don’t flip.
Pressed for comment, Greene’s office didn’t dispute that the representative had been on the receiving end of political threats from the White House on this front, saying only that she has no plans to change her mind. “Rep. Greene is not coming off the discharge petition,” spokesman Alec Ernst told National Review.
Nor did the White House dispute that administration officials are pressuring Republican signatories to reverse course, instead insisting that congressional Democrats are using the petition as a distraction from the government funding fight in the final crunch before September 30.
“Democrats and the media knew about Epstein and his victims for years and did nothing to help them while President Trump was calling for transparency, and is now delivering on it with thousands of pages of documents as part of the ongoing Oversight investigation,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement to National Review. “Now, the Democrats are using the Epstein Hoax to distract from their disastrous plan to shut down the government. Republicans have put forward a clean CR — that Democrats supported just 6 months ago — and Democrats would rather play to their far Left radical base than keep the federal government open for all Americans.”
Congressional party leaders are on the case, too. Earlier this week, Massie (R., Ky.) told Semafor that party leaders have turned up the heat in pressuring Republican signatories to flip. “They came back and tried to get the four of us to take our names off of the petition,” Massie said. “They asked some of my colleagues who are co-signers. And they actually threatened them politically, not physically.”