Epstein Files Discharge Petition Reaches Target
Newly-Sworn-in-Rep. Grijalva provides the final signature.
CBS News (“Epstein discharge petition secures final signature needed to force House vote on releasing files“):
An effort to force a House vote on compelling the Justice Department to release materials related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein secured the final signature it needed Wednesday after House Speaker Mike Johnson delayed the swearing-in of a newly elected Democrat for seven weeks.
The effort, known as a discharge petition, defies House GOP leaders, who have opposed putting legislation backed by Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky on the floor. Khanna and Massie introduced the measure, titled the Epstein Files Transparency Act, in July as pressure intensified on the Trump administration to release more Epstein-related files.
[…]
A discharge petition enables members of the lower chamber to bypass House leadership if they can get a majority of members — 218 — to sign on.
All House Democrats and four Republicans have added their names. Besides Massie, GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Lauren Boebert of Colorado have signed on. Two special elections in Virginia and Arizona in September provided the final two signatures from Democrats to reach the 218 threshold.
Rep. Adelita Grijalva, who was elected on Sept. 23 to fill the seat of her late father Raul, added her name to the petition on Wednesday, shortly after she was sworn in. She pointed to Epstein survivors in the House gallery who she said were present for her swearing-in.
“Just this morning, House Democrats released more emails showing that Trump knew more about Epstein’s abuses than he previously acknowledged,” Grijalva said. “It’s past time for Congress to restore its role as a check and balance on this administration and fight for we, the American people.”
[…]
Her signature on Wednesday starts the clock on a waiting period of seven legislative days before a member can motion to bring it to the floor. After that, leadership has two legislative days to schedule a vote, which could happen as soon as early December.
It’s unclear if the Senate would take it up if it clears the House.
“I believe we’re going to get 40, 50 Republicans voting with us on the release,” Khanna told reporters Wednesday. “And if we get that kind of overwhelming vote, that’s going to push the Senate and it’s going to push for a release of the files from the Justice Department.”
While calls to release the files have been something of a meme for months, I must confess to not having spent much time researching the propriety of doing so. Were President Trump and other high-profile figures not potentially implicated, my instinct would be that releasing the details of Justice Department investigations is inflammatory at least and dangerous at worst. One imagines most of the information contained therein was gathered under the promise of confidentiality. Further, the victims here deserve privacy.
Obviously, the fact that the sitting president is a matter of interest complicates matters. Ordinarily, I would say that Congress has enormous investigative powers and could conduct its own investigation. But we’re well past the point where anyone trusts Congress to conduct an impartial inquiry.
Can’t say I’ve ever had the slightest respect for Lauren Boebert, but I’ll give her this — Trump called her into the White House and had multiple goons try to browbeat her into withdrawing her signature, and she didn’t.
According to news reports today, several of the survivors want the files released.
There was a lot of discussion (assertion) that the shutdown was motivated by Johnson’s desire to keep Grijalva from being seating. This never made sense to me — the shutdown would eventually end and Grijalva eventually seated. And here we are.
I’m curious how the asserters make sense of this now. Note, I am not trying to play gotcha or rub anyone’s face in it — we all have incomplete info, things change, positions (can and should) change, etc. Rather, I’m truly interested in how people think about the current situation vis-a-vis their previous assertions.
@wr:
I don’t give her much credit. Even a display of the instruments of torture conducted personally by Kash Patel, which should scare any rational person spitless, seems unlikely to displace her grasp what her life would’ve been like had she became the one person who blocked the release.
@Mimai:
The hope that something would somehow happen.
Johnson was faced with the likelihood that he’d sold his soul to a pig who fucked 14 year-old girls and giggled lasciviously about the secrets he shared with a sex trafficker. How was this bible-thumping hypocrite supposed to cope with a pedophile master? I imagine he prayed up a storm that it wasn’t true and begged god to make it go away.
Mike Johnson is a stupid, spineless little nonentity with his tongue all the way up Trump’s ass. He had one tool: delay. Maybe Trump would magically produce an explanation. Maybe people would get bored and forget the story. Maybe Maxwell would find a way to exonerate Trump. Maybe MTG or Boebert could be turned. Maybe a war in Venezuela, maybe a pandemic, maybe a fucking asteroid. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Desperate people cling to hope and this is an idiot who believes in virgin birth and zombie saviors, he is not a rationalist.
Do you have an alternate suggestion for why Johnson would refuse to swear her in?
@Mimai:
My understanding is that the Epstein Files were the reason Johnson kept the house in recess, and Grijalva from being sworn in.
Also that he kept the house in recess so the senate would be forced to pass the house CR as written, no changes allowed.
Which, if any, is true?
I’m tempted to quote DS9:
Elim Garak: My dear Doctor, they’re all true.
Dr. Julian Bashir: Even the lies?
Elim Garak: Especially the lies.
@Michael Reynolds: delay worked for the unauthorized bathroom library of classified information case, so why change it up now?
He’s old. He can run out the clock.
Are those 7 days and 2 days calendar days, legislative days or some new secret type of day? That sounds like a variety of court cases right there which will be punted after long delay as political issues.
What happens when the House just doesn’t hold the vote?
Will the Republicans on the discharge petition be willing to can Mike Johnson? Can the Republicans get support for someone who will hold the vote?
BTW, if this somehow results in Speaker Jeffries, I will take back every awful thing I said about Schumer caving on the shutdown. 8 dimensional chess or luckiest man alive, whatever. (It will not result in Speaker Jeffries)
Releasing the files is a violation of long-standing policy and ethically dubious at best. It also seems to be necessary. A number of voters don’t care that we are led by an evil, incompetent, authoritarian, a-hole. Maybe they’ll care that he’s a pedophile. Assuming the files haven’t been cleaned up in all this time.
But it may be a moot question.
Through all this discussion of Grijalva, nobody seemed to want to mention the Senate, where everything except regressive tax cuts goes to die.
@Mimai: “I’m curious how the asserters make sense of this now.”
It bought him time. Now you might think this makes no sense, because Johnson didn’t actually do anything with the time he bought. But this is how just about everyone in the Trump orbit operates — do something that will take care of the problem for this minute and give no thought to how you’ll fix it going forward.
@Michael Reynolds: You said it much better than I did.
@gVOR10: “Through all this discussion of Grijalva, nobody seemed to want to mention the Senate, where everything except regressive tax cuts goes to die.”
That’s fine. Let the Republican senate block the release after the House demands it.
Re buying time: Yes, I can accept this as a possibility. Perhaps even a probability.
It makes me wonder, then, about the Dems’ motives (and if I’m being uncharitable, complicity). The OTB consensus appears to be that the shutdown served little, if any, purpose. It might even have been harmful. On net, it was a bad idea and/or execution.
At the same time, the consensus is that the Epstein issue is a potent one. Maybe even finally possibly one that can break through. Release the files NOW!!!
I’m having a hard time reconciling the two consensi.*
*Yes, I know, it was just fun to write.
@Mimai:
(forgive me for talking to myself in public)
Another relevant factor is Trump calling for an end to the filibuster –> sooner reopening of the government –> sooner seating of Grijalva –> sooner releasing of the Epstein files.
Trying to put all this together makes my brain hurt.
Perhaps I’m foolishly looking for coherence in all of this.
Perhaps I (we) are not understanding the dynamics/motivations.
@wr: According to Annie Karni (NYT), the amount of pressure Boebert was under just made her increasingly more convinced of a cover up/conspiracy. So, the pressure campaign pretty much backfired.
@Jen: ” the amount of pressure Boebert was under just made her increasingly more convinced of a cover up/conspiracy”
Which is actually pretty hilarious. They assumed that, like them, she was totally cynical and saying whatever she thought would get her ahead, and thus would bend when put under pressure. But it turned out she wasn’t cynical, she was a true nutbag!
I suspect this is going to be a problem for the administration going forward. People like Kash Patel, who made their careers demanding information about Epstein, have no problem abandoning everything they ever claimed to stand for once they’ve gotten what they wanted. And they’re assuming that the crazy caucus is really just like them. But these guys are true believers, and they’re not going to stop until they find that basement in Comet Ping-Pong!
@Michael Reynolds:
The House wasn’t in session?
@Mimai:
Perhaps. Trump is not a strategic thinker. He wanted the governent back open and ending the filibuster accomplished that. He doesn’t think two steps ahead.
@James Joyner:
While that is common practice, it is not a requirement.
Many of the victims are asking for them to be release.
Additionally, I’m super confused as to how the Clinton campaign missed all of this. Especially since she was implicated in the nonexistent pizza-gate pedo-sex ring at Comet Pizza. But, there was already so much that should have stopped this guy. Like an overwhelming amount of things. Thats true even more the second time around.
Let me add, that all of this should have been public under Biden, especially if there is relevance to a prior president – even if it was Bill Clinton. Nothing makes sense.
What makes sense is that the files will give off a lot of politically damaging smoke, but not enough legal fire. At which point relatively decent people like Biden and yes, Garland (a fool, I think, but not evil) default back to civilized norms of not trashing those who are innocent until proven guilty or releasing information that could lead to victims being outed (yes, some have said they want it out but they are already known; it’s 100% sure there are still a bunch of victims who don’t want anything released). Honestly the fact that Biden did NOT release the files is the clearest evidence around of his fundamental human decency, the lack of legal smoking guns in the files, and what a giant projection lie it was every time the right said he weaponized the Justice department.
The victims who are NOT asking for this is why I’m still pretty uncomfortable about the whole release thing. Yeah, it’s politically damaging to Trump (almost ridiculously so, when you consider all the other reasons his base SHOULD desert him) so…yay? But damn…this is going to hurt some people who have been hurt enough-even if they manage to remain anonymous its not going to bring up pleasant memories and it’s going to be everywhere.
Just another sign of how depressing and demoralizing things are these days. What price stopping a tyrant who plans to steal future elections?