US Politics
Mike Johnson shuts Congress for summer to avoid dealing with Trump handling of Epstein files
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House Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday ground the House of Representatives to a screeching halt in order to block Democrats from bringing up amendments calling for the release of files related to sex trafficking financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The speaker’s decision to virtually shut down procedure in the House of Representatives — a week before Congress’ summer break — comes as President Donald Trump continues to receive criticism from all sides for his handling of the promised release of all government files related to Epstein.
But Johnson’s early recess could also impact the House’s ability to keep the government open when they return and allow political crises to mushroom when members go back home to face their constituents.
The move to halt the action of the House Rules committee came after Democrats repeatedly tried to introduce amendments to force the disclosure of files related to Epstein, who was found hanged in his New York prison cell in 2019.
Johnson expressed his frustration over what he described as the Democrats’ attempts to weaponize the Rules process, at times pounding his fist on the podium talking about Epstein, attacking the minority for their supposed hypocrisy for covering for former President Joe Biden’s diminished state in the second half of his administration.
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“We’re not going to allow them to engage in that charade,” Johnson told reporters during his weekly press conference.
“They controlled the Department of Justice for the last four years,” the speaker said. “Has anyone forgotten they had all these files the entire time?”
But Rep. Jim McGovern, the ranking Democrat on the Rules Committee, criticized Johnson’s maneuvering.
“I mean, it tells me that he’s scared s***less,” McGovern told The Independent. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this. I mean, where, I mean, literally, the Speaker of the House just canceled everything and said, you know, as the song goes, ‘See you in September.’”
Republicans have hoped to shift the conversation more toward touting the merits of their “One Big, Beautiful Bill” legislation that Trump signed into law on July 4. But the party fell into bedlam this month after the Justice Department in conjunction with the FBI released a two-page memo that determined that Epstein had no client list and that no “further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.”
That came despite the fact that many officials who would join the Trump administration such as Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino pledged they would release additional information about Epstein.
Republicans came into further chaos when last week The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump allegedly sent a bawdy 50th birthday card message to Epstein, his former friend whom he broke with before the feds began investigating Epstein publicly.
The president vehemently denied that he sent it and filed a $10 million federal lawsuit against the paper, its parent company News Corp and its founder Rupert Murdoch.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Johnson insisted that Trump wanted to get to the bottom of the story.
“Trump’s in the courts right now trying to get a lot of that information unsealed so the American public can see it,” Scalise said.
But Trump only announced he would ask Bondi to release grand jury transcripts after the WSJ reported its story.
Trump himself has called the Epstein conspiracy theories over which he once fanned the flames a “hoax” and now says “my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker.”
The halting of votes for the House Rules Committee means that the House will not be able to tee up votes to pass many of the spending bills that Congress hoped to pass before the August recess, when members break to go back to their districts.
When it returns, Congress must pass its spending bills by the end of September to avoid a government shutdown.
But Johnson might not then be able to avoid a vote on Epstein.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) teamed up with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) to pass a discharge petition, which allows them to circumvent the committee process to bring a vote on releasing files related to Epstein to the floor.
“They know that the public wants that, and they don’t want their members voting,” Khanna told The Independent. “I mean, I’ve ever seen anything like it.”
So far, many Republicans have joined onto the petition and every Democrat will likely sign on, much to the chagrin of Johnson.
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“We’re not going to play political games with this,” Johnson said. “You have to allow the legislation to ripen, and you also have to allow the administration the space to do what it is doing.”
Discharge petitions need seven legislative business days to ripen. The House broke late on Thursday evening into Friday morning last week and its last legislative day before the recess will be on Wednesday, meaning the petition will be kicked into when the House reconvenes in September.
But even if the House were to pass Massie and Khanna’s legislation, it would need to face a vote in the Senate, where it would face a more significant challenge.
On Tuesday afternoon, Bill Gates, the multibillionaire co-founder of Microsoft who was a friend of Epstein, was roaming the basement of the Senate.
He did not respond to questions from The Independent about disclosing files related to Epstein.
