WASHINGTON — After a weeks-long delay, Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., on Wednesday are on the cusp of securing enough signatures to bypass GOP leaders and force a floor vote to compel the Justice Department to release all of the files in its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
Rep. Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz. — who won the seat of her late father in a September special election — has vowed she’ll be the 218th signature on Massie and Khanna’s “discharge petition” after she is sworn into office at around 4 p.m. ET Wednesday.
That number represents a simple majority of the entire 435-member House chamber.
Under House rules, once a discharge petition hits that magic number of 218 signatures, the House must act on it, though seven legislative days must pass before a vote can be called.
“It’s unbelievable that for seven-plus weeks, Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva … decisively has been denied the ability to serve more than 800,000 people in Arizona. And why is that the case? It’s because Republicans are running a pedophile protection program. They are intentionally hiding the Jeffrey Epstein files,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told reporters Tuesday night.
“But those days are over, because as soon as Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva becomes Congresswoman Grijalva, her first act … is going to be to sign that discharge petition,” he added. “It’s going to force a vote on the House floor, and the American people are going to get the transparency that they deserve.”
The Massie-Khanna bill, known as the Epstein Files Transparency Act, would require the Justice Department to “publicly disclose all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in its possession that relate to Epstein,” the convicted sex offender who died in prison in 2019 or his co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a prison sentence.
The bill contains some limited exemptions, including for personally identifiable information of victims and for classified information.
It is expected to pass the House, but it still would need to clear the GOP-controlled Senate and be signed by the president to become law, which is unlikely.
Grijalva was supposed to take the oath of office shortly after her Sept. 23 election victory. But the government shut down a week later, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., refused to swear in Grijalva until a handful of Senate Democrats joined Republicans in voting to reopen the government.
They did so on Monday, and the House is set to pass the funding bill later Wednesday.
The seven-week delay sparked Democratic protests outside the speaker’s office; on one occasion, Democrats verbally sparred with Johnson himself.
Grijalva becoming the 218th signature on the discharge petition marks a dramatic development in the Epstein saga, which has dogged President Donald Trump and his administration since July, when the Justice Department and FBI published a short memo stating that their Epstein records contained no “incriminating ‘client list’” or evidence that would lead to additional prosecution of third parties.
That information was at odds with what Kash Patel himself had said about the existence of a client list before he became Trump’s FBI director this year. And the fight over the Epstein files has driven a wedge between Trump and some in his MAGA base who say they want justice for Epstein’s victims.
“What the hell are the House Republicans doing?” Patel told conservative media personality Benny Johnson on his podcast in 2024. “They have the majority. You can’t get the list? … Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are!”
After the Trump administration’s memo, Massie and Khanna began building bipartisan support for their discharge petition. As lawmakers returned from their five-week summer recess in early September, the pair held a news conference outside the Capitol with more than a half dozen women who said Epstein and Maxwell had abused them when they were minors. Some said they had been trafficked to Epstein’s island in the Caribbean or his ranch in New Mexico.
Four Republicans — Massie, along with Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Lauren Boebert, R-Ga., and Nancy Mace, R-S.C. — signed on to the discharge petition, as did all 212 Democrats.
But Speaker Johnson has slammed the discharge effort as “reckless” and unnecessary. The House Oversight Committee is already investigating the matter, he said, and has been releasing troves of records from both the government and the Epstein estate. Many of the first batch of files released by the committee had already been made public. It then released a 2003 book of congratulatory letters to mark Epstein’s 50th birthday, provided to the committee by his estate. The book included a lewd message allegedly from Trump, who has denied its authenticity.
Johnson has warned that releasing all the files could risk making public “innocent people’s names and reputations,” as well as disclosing the identities of Epstein victims who do not want to come forward. But the legislation states the attorney general may withhold or redact records that “contain personally identifiable information of victims or victims’ personal and medical files … the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
Meanwhile, Trump and top White House officials last month began burning up the phone lines and whipping on-the-fence Republicans to ensure they didn’t sign the discharge petition.
Trump himself has dismissed efforts in Congress to force the release of the files as a “Democrat Epstein Hoax,” and a White House official said it would be seen as a “hostile act” to the president if Republicans support it.
In early September, Massie and Khanna had appeared to hit an impasse, stuck at 216 signatures and unable to convince any other Republicans to get on board.
But they got their 217th signature on Sept. 10 after Democrat James Walkinshaw won a special election to replace his former boss, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., who died earlier this year.
Grijalva will put Massie and Khanna over the top with the 218th signature after winning another special election to succeed her father, longtime Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., who died in March.