Epstein discharge petition picks up decisive signature in the House

WASHINGTON — After a delay of nearly two months as Speaker Mike Johnson kept the House out of Washington, a revolt over the Epstein files reached critical mass on Wednesday.

Rep. Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz., wasted no time after being sworn into office, immediately backing an effort to shake loose documents related to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

She provided the crucial 218th signature on a discharge petition, a procedural tool that allows rank-and-file House members to lodge their support for a piece of legislation, circumvent leadership and force a vote. Filed by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., the Epstein petition had been sitting on 217 signatures.

In her maiden speech, Grijalva shouted out two Epstein survivors who she said were in the gallery. She called out Johnson for “unilaterally” delaying her swearing in. And she said it was time to fight back against Trump. “That is why I will sign the discharge petition right now to release the Epstein files. Justice cannot wait another day,” Grijalva said.

Massie joined her at the front of the chamber as she added her signature.

Now that a majority of the House has signed on, the clock starts on a waiting period of seven legislative days, followed by other procedural steps to bring the underlying legislation to the floor — though Johnson suggested Wednesday he might choose to speed things up and bring it to the floor sooner. Supporters say their proposal, which would direct the Department of Justice to publicly release documents in its possession related to Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, is a bid for transparency.

It reignites a debate that has raged for much of this year. After suggesting during his reelection campaign that he was open to declassifying some Epstein documents, President Donald Trump has changed course, describing the controversy around them as a “ hoax.” Support for the discharge petition would be viewed as a “ hostile act,” the White House had said, and the president and his allies have targeted Massie, an idiosyncratic lawmaker with an independent streak who often acts as a foil to Republican House leaders.

Meanwhile, most Americans support releasing all the Epstein documents with victims’ names removed, according to an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. An Epstein vote could put many congressional Republicans in a tough position, forced to go on the record on a topic they had hoped to avoid.

On Wednesday, the controversy reached a fever pitch, as the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released another trove of redacted documents as part of its own investigation. Democrats on the panel used their social media accounts to highlight emails from Epstein that reference Trump, including one that reads in part, “of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Wednesday that the emails did not prove that Trump was guilty of any wrongdoing.

“What President Trump has always said is that he was from Palm Beach, and so was Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein was a member at Mar-a-Lago until President Trump kicked him out because Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile and he was a creep,” Leavitt said.

Grijalva took office Wednesday seven weeks after winning a Sept. 23 special election to fill the seat once occupied by her father, Raúl M. Grijalva, who died in March. Though Johnson earlier this year swore in two Republican lawmakers during pro-forma sessions of the House — brief meetings of the chamber that do not typically feature official business — he refused to do so this time.

Johnson’s shutdown strategy involved keeping the House out of session for as long as Senate Democrats declined to vote for a stopgap spending bill to reopen the government. The speaker said repeatedly he would bring the House back and swear in Grijalva only when the funding stalemate ended.

While Grijalva waited, the Trump administration pressured three GOP women — Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Nancy Mace of South Carolina — over their support for the discharge petition, The New York Times and other outlets reported. Greene, Boebert, Mace and Massie were the only Republicans to sign on.

Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said earlier Wednesday he had been concerned one of the Republican women would pull her name.

“The question is why? What is Donald Trump trying to hide?” Garcia said. “Donald Trump is now apparently calling Republican members of Congress directly, bringing them possibly to the White House to take them off the petition.”

The discharge petition is part of a broader spectacle around the Epstein files, a cause celebre for much of the political right leading up to last year’s presidential election and now an albatross around the neck of the Trump White House.

Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., have led the charge and kept the Epstein files in focus even as Trump and Johnson tried to downplay the issue. In September, the two lawmakers invited a group of Epstein survivors to speak at the Capitol, with plans to hold another. Some survivors also met with lawmakers on the Oversight and Government Reform panel.

Johnson has characterized the Oversight Committee’s investigation as the proper path forward, but Massie and Khanna have questioned the seriousness of the probe.

Even if the legislation advances out of the House, it’s unlikely to gain traction in the Republican-controlled Senate, where 60 votes would be needed to overcome a filibuster.

In October, Johnson told reporters he would allow the resolution to come to the floor. But earlier this year House leadership attempted to kill an unrelated discharge petition that would have forced a vote on a resolution allowing recent congressional parents to vote by proxy.

When the proxy discharge petition hit 218 votes, Johnson and Republicans on the House Rules Committee inserted language into a rule that would have quashed the proxy push and warded off any future efforts. Nine Republicans bucked leadership and helped defeat the rule.

Johnson responded by canceling votes for the week and ultimately cut a deal with Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla. — a leader of the proxy voting effort — that avoided a floor vote on the issue altogether.

Because discharge petitions require some members of the majority party to join the minority in bucking leadership, they rarely succeed. But this week, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries opted to use the same tactic to try to force a vote on extending Affordable Care Act tax credits, a key sticking point in the government funding stalemate. He filed his own discharge petition Wednesday.

“Affordable Care Act tax credits were extended by three years in the Inflation Reduction Act,” Jeffries told reporters. “The legislation that we will introduce in the context of a discharge petition will provide that level of certainty to working class Americans who are on the verge of seeing their premiums, co-pays and deductibles skyrocket.”

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(John Bennett, Nina Heller, Victor Feldman and Daniel Hillburn contributed to this report.)

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