Speaker Mike Johnson said in an interview Tuesday morning he would allow a floor vote on a bipartisan bill compelling the full release of the Jeffrey Epstein files — once the House comes back into session following the end of the government shutdown.
“If it hits 218, it comes to the floor,” Johnson said of the discharge petition, a procedural maneuver that allows members to bypass leadership to force a floor vote on legislation if it receives that requisite number of lawmaker signatures.
The discharge petition, led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), will reach that threshold once Johnson swears in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat who won a special election weeks ago to succeed her late father, Raúl Grijalva. Johnson, however, has said he will not officially seat her until Democrats in the Senate vote on House-passed legislation to fund the government — a decision Democrats say is driven by his desire to keep a vote on the Epstein files at bay.
Johnson also insisted he would not stand in the way of allowing the bill to come to the floor, as he has done in recent months. “No, we’re not — that’s how it works: If you get the signatures, it goes to a vote.”
That he won’t seek to a block a vote on the discharge petition if it gets 218 signers echoes comments he has made privately to fellow House Republicans for months. But Johnson also has in the past worked with senior House GOP leaders to circumvent that outcome, including by adjourning the House early for the August recess and shutting down the Rules Committee, which sets parameters for much of the chamber’s floor activity.
White House officials and senior Republicans also have, for weeks, been waging a quiet pressure campaign to get the three female Republicans to remove their names from the discharge petition — without success.
In any event, Johnson added, the Massie-Khanna vote was now “totally superfluous … All this work’s been done and will continue to be done.”
His comments follow lengthy remarks at a press conference earlier Tuesday morning, where Johnson praised the work of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee for leading an investigation into the late, convicted sex offender. So far, he said, the panel has released 43,000 pages of documents, issued many deposition subpoenas and received suspicious activity reports from the Treasury Department’s financial records.
Among the files now public are Epstein’s personal phone logs, financial ledgers and daily calendars.
“The bipartisan House Oversight Committee is already accomplishing what the discharge petition, that gambit, sought and much more,” Johnson said, at the press conference, adding that all “credible information” would be released to the public as part of the panel’s monthslong probe into the matter, while taking precautions to protect Epstein’s accusers.
“I’ve met with some of the Epstein victims,” Johnson said. “We’re working around the clock to ensure that justice is served and also as part of the oversight to figure out why justice has been delayed for so long.”
Still, Johnson lamented, “some Democrats and sadly even a couple Republicans have tried to make this a political issue.”
House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), also on hand for the press conference Tuesday, said his committee’s work has demonstrated that President Donald Trump was not implicated in the Epstein case, despite Trump’s admitted relationship with Epstein years ago.
Comer added that the panel was working to bring former President Bill Clinton, whose relationship with Epstein has also been long chronicled, in for a deposition. He later told reporters that Clinton’s legal team has been cooperating with his office toward that end.
The Justice Department, though, has signaled it will only resume cooperation with the committee to transmit information to Capitol Hill once the government shutdown ends.
