On Thursday, I phoned Congressman Ben Cline’s Washington office (202-225-5431) and posed the following questions for him:
- Are you going to sign the bipartisan discharge petition to force a vote in the House to release the full Epstein files?
- Do you agree with the White House that signing the petition is a “very hostile act”?
On Friday I received the following email from Cline’s office:
Bottom line: Cline won’t to dare sign the discharge petition for fear of retribution by Trump and his supporters.
According to Robert Garcia, ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee:
“The 33,000 pages of Epstein documents [committee chair] James Comer has decided to ‘release’ were already mostly public information. To the American people – don’t let this fool you.
After careful review, Oversight Democrats have found that 97 percent of the documents received from the Department of Justice were already public. There is no mention of any client list or anything that improves transparency or justice for victims.
House Republicans are trying to make a spectacle of releasing already-public documents. Pam Bondi has said the client list was on her desk. She could release it right now if she wanted to.
While Comer tries to give cover to Trump by re-releasing public documents, House Democrats are fighting for real transparency. Pam Bondi must comply with our subpoena immediately, and release all of the documents. The American people demand it.”
Congressman Thomas Massie, one of a handful of Republicans supporting the petition, made clear that the non-binding House Resolution 668 that Cline voted for wasn’t enough:
Republican leaders are hoping that document release and a vote on an alternative symbolic measure will head off Massie’s efforts to get his bill to the House floor.
“It doesn’t change a thing,” Massie told reporters. “It’s giving political cover for some people, but that’s fleeting, because eventually people are going to pore through those documents and find out there’s nothing new in there.”
On Wednesday a group of survivors of abuse by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell pleaded with House members to sign the discharge petition.
All of which raises the question: Why are Cline and other congressional Republicans, as well as Donald Trump (who refers to the Epstein matter as a “hoax”), so desperate to prevent a vote to release the full records?
What are they trying to hide?
Gene Zitver is the editor of ClineWatch.
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