Epstein furor upends House for second week in row

The Jeffrey Epstein saga is causing chaos in the House for the second week in a row, as threats of Democrats forcing politically tough votes are prompting House GOP leadership to toss out many of their plans for the week.

The trouble started as soon as lawmakers returned to Washington on Monday, when the House Rules Committee, which sets up action for bills on the floor, met to tee up votes to rescind Biden-era rules and on an immigration bill.

But Democrats, who had forced Republicans on the panel into a number of politically difficult votes on the Epstein matter last week, threatened to do so again. They planned to stage a vote on bringing legislation to the floor that would compel the release of the Epstein files.

Rather than face those votes, Republicans are opting to simply not tee up any votes at all, according to multiple members of the panel — leaving the House with no floor business in the days ahead of August recess beyond noncontroversial suspension bills, fast-track measures that need two-thirds support to pass.

“Democrats keep putting all these amendments up. They want to make Epstein — and, you know, we're all for transparency, and we're going to do that, but what they want to do is grandstand. They said they'll be there all night, we'll be there all night,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a member of the Rules Committee, told reporters. He added that the committee was not expected to return, and the House would only deal with suspension votes.

Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.), the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, confirmed that the panel would not reconvene for the rest of the week.

“We’re done,” McGovern told The Hill. “Not reporting out a rule, we’re done for the night, we’re done for the week. … There’s some issues going on within the Republican conference, I think around the Epstein stuff, that they can’t seem to get under control. So we’ll do probably suspensions for the remainder of the week.”

It is the second time in as many weeks the so-called Epstein files saga has thwarted GOP leadership’s plans for the House floor.

Republicans on the Rules Committee last week had tried to address the Epstein matter after being lambasted by the public over rejecting a Democratic amendment, an effort that delayed action on a bill to codify Department of Government Efficiency cuts to public broadcasting and foreign aid for hours.

The GOP members on the panel came up with a nonbinding resolution calling for the release of more files and teed it up for floor action. But GOP leadership has no plans to bring the matter for a vote.

Johnson said earlier Monday that the House would not vote on the legislation before the August recess — which is scheduled to begin after votes on Thursday.

Instead, Johnson said he wanted to give the administration time to act on the matter on its own.

“Here’s what I would say about the Epstein files: There is no daylight between the House Republicans, the House, and the president on maximum transparency,” Johnson said in the Capitol on Monday. “He has said that he wants all the credible files related to Epstein to be released. He’s asked the attorney general to request the grand jury files of the court. All of that is in process right now.”

“My belief is we need the administration to have the space to do what it is doing, and if further congressional action is necessary or appropriate, then we’ll look at that,” he added. “But I don’t think we’re at that point right now because we agree with the president.”

One source said that holding a floor vote on the nonbinding resolution was suggested to leadership as a way to avoid the headaches over votes forced by Democrats, and that was not the favored option by leadership.

The dilemma for Republicans came up in a meeting with leadership and other top House leaders on Monday, two sources told The Hill. Rep. Erin Houchin (R-Ind.), who sits on the Rules Committee, raised concerns with having to vote on the Democratic-led amendment — which has key differences from the GOP-crafted one — in the panel meeting and instead advocated for voting on the Republican resolution or a different measure for transparency, one of the sources said.

A competing Epstein measure from Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) — one that would, if passed by both chambers and signed by the president, have more teeth — is further complicating the Epstein dynamic.

Massie and Khanna have pledged to force a vote on their Epstein-release bill through the discharge petition process, if they can get 218 House members to sign on. If all Democrats in the House and all the Republicans who have already co-sponsored the resolution do so, they can back GOP leadership into a corner.

Due to procedural rules, any vote wouldn’t take place until at least after the House returns from August recess in September — by which time many Republicans hope the Epstein furor will have died down.

But Massie — carrying a binder that read “The Epstein Files: Phase 2” in reference to the notorious “Phase 1” binders that Attorney General Pam Bondi distributed to MAGA influencers earlier this year — expects there will still be an appetite for that forced vote.

“This is not going away,” Massie said Monday.

Johnson defended the decision Monday night, contending that Republicans would not play into the Democrats’ “political games.” He also said there was no time-sensitive legislation that had to be dealt with under a rule this week.

“There was nothing else that was time-sensitive this week that we needed to handle by way of a rule so the work of the House will continue all week, we’ll be here doing our work, and we won't have the Democrats, we won't we won't allow them a platform to try and engage in political games,” Johnson said. “So that’s all it was.”

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) downplayed the significance of the logjam, saying the House this week can still vote on suspensions and focus on committee meetings and hearings.

“We still have a lot of other work to do,” he told reporters.

Updated at 10:24 p.m. EDT