WASHINGTON — House Democrats prevented a quick vote on legislation that would require the Justice Department to release all its files on sex predator Jeffrey Epstein, apparently hoping to keep the controversy in the spotlight longer, the GOP has alleged.
Ahead of the House vote to end the 43-day government shutdown, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) took to the floor and requested unanimous consent to immediately vote on the Epstein bill.
The GOP attempt failed, with Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), the senior GOPer in charge of the House floor, explaining: “The chair is constrained not to entertain the request unless cleared by the bipartisan floor and committee leaderships.”
“I tried to get the Epstein files [bill] straight to the floor, cut out all of this nonsense and the Democrats blocked it, oddly enough,” Burchett grumbled after his effort failed. “This is politics. It has nothing to do with what’s right.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson alleged that Democrats blocked the GOP from fast-tracking a bill forcing the release of the Epstein files. JIM LO SCALZO/EPA/Shutterstock
House Democrats have backed the discharge petition to force a vote on compelling the Justice Department to release the Epstein files. AP
Womack was restricted by House rules from revealing which party blocked Burchett’s unanimous consent request — but the Tennessee lawmaker, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), and others insisted Democrats stood in the way.
The bill was the “Epstein Files Transparency Act,” which was introduced by Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who is championing an identical piece of legislation with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to release the Epstein files that is set to receive a vote next week.
Khanna and Massie have secured sufficient support for what’s known as a discharge petition to get a vote on their similar legislation to release the Epstein files, despite opposition from House Republican leadership.
Burchett did not sign the discharge petition, but wanted to bring the vote on Khanna’s similar bill forward.
“I have not seen many stories written yet about the fact we put the discharge petition up for unanimous consent on the floor tonight,” Johnson vented to reporters Wednesday.
“The Democrats objected to the unanimous consent. Nobody has written a story about that. That is stunning to me.”
Both conservative and liberal activists alike have pushed Congress to require the government to release all of the Epstein files. AFP via Getty ImagesHouse Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ (D-NY) office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Massie and Khanna began pursuing their discharge petition after the FBI and DOJ publicly concluded this past July that Epstein, 66, committed suicide while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges and did not maintain a “client list” of powerful friends to whom he peddled girls as young as 14 — contrary to widespread speculation.
Meanwhile, lefty Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett got put in her place on live TV by CNN anchors after she falsely tried to blame Republicans for redacting the name of one of Epstein’s victims in a newly released email.
The email in question was part of a tranche of 23,000 pages of documents from the convicted pedophile’s estate released by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee this week after Democrats published a smaller batch in which they chose to redact the name of deceased victim Virginia Giuffre.
Republicans later revealed the omitted name in the 2011 email was Giuffre, and accused the Democrats of deliberately muddying the waters by obscuring it.
“The fact that Trump does not want these files to be out to me says he has more to hide than him actually being able to exonerate himself,” Crockett said on “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer” Thursday.
However CNN anchor Pamela Brown then produced the email, and pointed out that Giuffre, who died by suicide in April, wrote in her posthumously published memoir that Trump had no hand in the disgraced financier’s wrongdoing.
“And I don’t know why they would necessarily redact someone’s name who is deceased at this point,” Crockett said.
President Trump has repeatedly and publicly lashed out over the ongoing Epstein controversy, and did so again this week.
“The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects,” Trump warned on Truth Social Wednesday.
“Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap.”
Notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his prison cell back in 2019. APThat same day, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee released more than 20,000 documents obtained from Epstein’s estate.
“The Oversight Committee has been delving in deeply to the Epstein investigation,” Johnson told CNN’s “The Lead” on Monday, calling the discharge petition “a moot point.”
“There’s plenty of oversight. All of that information is going to be released to the public.”
Massie’s and Khanna’s discharge petition includes a carveout allowing the Trump administration to redact the names of the victims as well as explicit child sexual abuse materials.
Chris Nesi contributed to this report.
