House Speaker Mike Johnson made clear Tuesday that Republicans have no interest in actually releasing the Epstein files, and are only pretending to want to do so, with legislation called the Epstein Files Transparency Act, to string everybody along as long as possible, hoping the issue will go away, which, it won’t.
Speaking on Capitol Hill minutes after a press conference featuring Epstein survivors, Johnson told reporters that he is “very confident that when this moves forward in the process, if and when it is processed in the Senate, which is no certainty, they will take the time methodically to do what we have not been allowed to do in the House, to amend this discharge petition.”
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“It is dangerously flawed,” Johnson said, before urging Senate Majority Leader John Thune to fix its issues with the authorizing legislation. “Our problem and our frustration is, there’s no way for us in the House to amend it or correct these problems because the authors of the discharge will not allow it.”
The message there: the votes today in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, which, shocker, passed the Epstein files bill without amendment, was to be but a first step in what MAGA leaders expect to be a slow walk toward nothing on the promised supposed release of the files into Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced billionaire who died in federal custody in 2019 on charges that he led an extensive child sex-trafficking ring that has been linked to dozens of political, cultural and economic elites, including Trump, Epstein’s long-time best friend.
Trump reversed course over the weekend on months of strenuous efforts to block the release and castigate the legitimacy of the Epstein files, insisting in a social-media post that “we have nothing to hide” as he urged Republicans to vote for the discharge petition that Johnson is already trying to gum up even before the bill passes the House.
“It’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party,” Trump wrote in the interwebs post, which conveniently noted the sham investigation that he ordered his attorney general, Pam Bondi, to open into the ties of Epstein to “various Democrat operatives” – specifically naming former president Bill Clinton, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Larry Summers, a former Clinton and Obama adviser.
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Not exactly hidden in the Trump post was the real purpose behind the sham investigation, which is clearly aimed at providing cover for the release of the files – which we can all see will be, sorry, can’t release the files, because this is, once again, an active, ongoing investigation.
When we do get that official word from the Trump administration, that it can’t release the files, despite the eventual passage of legislation by Congress and Trump’s signature, keep that in mind as you consider one of the key claims about the “hoax” that you hear from the MAGA side – that Democrats had the files in their possession for four years during the Biden administration, didn’t release them then, and are only making an issue of the files now to try to undermine Trump.
Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie Brown, whose work on the Epstein case is credited with uncovering the Epstein sex ring, leading to his arrest, and the arrest and conviction of his girlfriend and co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, points out the obvious on why the files remained under wraps during the Biden years.
“Maxwell’s criminal case was still open during the Biden administration,” Brown wrote on social media, offering what we call in the trade an “explainer.” “She wasn’t convicted until late 2021, and then she appealed her conviction. Generally, it’s not a good idea to open your evidence files when a criminal case is ongoing. We also don’t know whether the FBI was *still* investigating other possible suspects who helped Epstein or participated in his crimes. If you are still targeting suspects, you don’t want them to know you are zeroing in on them.”
That seems quaint, doesn’t it, that an administration would follow standard operating procedure when it comes to the handling of evidence in a criminal investigation, even when it involves a matter that could make political rivals look bad.
That, we are all well aware, is not what will be going on with the molasses-slow walk being engineered by Johnson, Thune and Trump at this stage to keep the Epstein files from being made public.
“Today, the House of Representatives will actually vote on releasing the Epstein files, now that Donald Trump says, go ahead and do it. Question I have, if they vote that way, will we actually get all the files? Anybody that’s this obsessed about keeping them out of the public’s hands obviously has something to hide,” U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said today.
The excuses from Johnson in his presser are borderline comical – among them, that “Democrats are trying to use the Epstein matter as a political weapon to distract from their own party’s failures,” and that the release of the files “could ruin the reputations of completely innocent people, such as those who may just have known Epstein but knew nothing of his crimes or whose names he exploited and used to try to get close to his intended victims.”
Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican House member who has led the effort from inside MAGA to force the release of the Epstein files, speaking at the press conference with the Epstein survivors, called the excuses “a red herring.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene, also speaking at the survivors press conference, went several steps further.
“I was called a traitor by a man that I fought for five, no, actually six, years for, and I gave him my loyalty for free,” Taylor Greene said, going on to add:
“Let me tell you what a traitor is. A traitor is an American that serves foreign countries and themselves. A patriot is an American that serves the United States of America and Americans like the women standing behind me.”
Did MJT just call Donald Trump a “traitor” there?
Sure seems like it, but then, she’s also been the target of threats from Trump supporters because of her outspoken stance on the Epstein files matter, so you can forgive her for going the hyperbole route.
“I wanna see every single name released so that these women don’t have to live in fear and intimidation, which is something that I had a small taste of in just the past few days,” Taylor Greene said, concluding:
“The real test will be if the DOJ will release the files.”
We know the answer to that ever happening.
“To the president of the United States of America, who is not here today, I want to send a clear message to you: while I do understand that your position has changed on the Epstein files, and I’m grateful that you have pledged to sign this bill, I can’t help to be skeptical of what the agenda is. So, with that being said, I want to relay this message to you: I am traumatized. I am not stupid,” Epstein survivor Haley Robson said.
“You have put us through so much stress, the lockdown, the halt of these procedures that were supposed to have happened 50 days ago, Adelita Grijalva, who waited to get sworn in, and then get upset when your own party goes against you, because what is being done is wrong,” Robson said.
“It’s not right. For your own self-serving purposes. This is America. This is land of the free, land of the free,” Robson said.
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Chris Graham
