President Donald Trump is reportedly scrambling to sway the three Republican congresswomen who signed the petition to force a vote ordering the release of all government files related to Jeffrey Epstein.
And Republican leaders in the House of Representatives are trying to stop the vote from happening now that enough members of Congress have signed a measure to force a full floor vote and Democrats recently gained a deciding vote on the measure.
Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) put forth a bipartisan discharge petition to release files related to the late convicted sex offender and pedophile. A discharge petition needs to receive the signatures of a majority of members to force a vote without the consent of leadership.
Massie said he did not think House Speaker Mike Johnson would block the final vote.
“If he does, that’s the cover-up right there,” Massie told The Independent last week before the House left for the Jewish high holidays. “He’d better served and serve this party better to go ahead and have this vote or for the 218th signature be a Republican.”
Massie also warned against using procedural tricks in the same way Johnson tried to use them to block another discharge petition by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) to try and force a vote to allow for new parents to cast proxy votes on the floor.
“That procedural vote becomes the vote of record,” he said. “I’m pretty sure my co-signers would be strong not to fall for that.”
So far, three Republican members of congress have signed with Massie’s discharge petition: Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Nancy Mace of South Carolina. And those are the House members the White House is seeking to sway, CNN reported.
Some of those GOP lawmakers “are privately being pressured to withdraw their name from the petition,” sources told the outlet.
No other Republicans have joined the petition given that Trump has repeatedly called files related to Epstein a “Democrat hoax” even as survivors of the late predator came to Capitol Hill to push for the release of the files. But since the petition was filed, Democrats gained two extra seats thanks to a special election in Virginia 11th district earlier this month and on Tuesday, Arizona’s 7th had a special election.
Democratic Rep. James Walkinshaw of Virginia signed the discharge petition as soon as he was sworn in. In the same token, Adelita Grijalva said she would sign the petition as soon as she is sworn in to her Arizona seat by Speaker Mike Johnson.
“I’m planning on traveling to Washington, D.C. on Monday to join my Democratic colleagues in demanding that Republicans come to the negotiating table to prevent a government shutdown and vote on the release of the Epstein files,” she said in a statement on X.
Discharge petitions, which are a way for members to push their legislation even when they are in the minority party or don’t have the support of leadership, have a poor record of going through the House of Representatives. And even then, the legislation would need to get through the United States Senate.
The most uncertain vote would be Mace. A sexual assault survivor herself, she was visibly unsettled after meeting with survivors of Epstein.
But Mace is also running for governor of South Carolina as a pro-Trump MAGA Republican. She is running in a tight primary and would likely need Trump’s endorsement to win.
