Mike Johnson’s Gamble on Releasing Epstein Files Blows Up in His Face

If House Speaker Mike Johnson thought his buddy Senate Majority Leader John Thune would help hold up a measure to release the government’s files on Jeffrey Epstein, he was sorely mistaken.

The House voted 427–1 in favor of the Epstein Files Transparency Act (H.R.4405) Tuesday. Shortly after, Thune sounded optimistic about advancing the effort to release a complete trove of documents on the alleged sex offender, who had ties to prominent figures such as President Donald Trump, through the Senate.

Thune said that the Senate would likely take up the petition “very quickly,” after Trump revealed he was “prepared” to sign it, according to Semafor’s Burgess Everett.

Thune acknowledged that Johnson hoped his colleagues in the Senate would amend the legislation but admitted that making changes “wasn’t likely” after the overwhelming support from the House.

That could spell bad news for Johnson. Earlier Tuesday, the staunch Trump ally said he was “very confident” that Thune and Senate Republicans would address his own laundry list of concerns about the resolution.

Alongside his supposed concerns about not protecting the identities of victims, or not adequately preventing the release of child sexual abuse materials, Johnson has also expressed fears that the release could potentially disclose “non-credible allegations” and risk “creating new victims.”

Representative Thomas Massie, the sole Republican co-sponsor of the resolution, dismissed Johnson’s so-called concerns as a “red herring” and warned they could simply be another “delay tactic.”

Donald Trump couldn’t handle a reporter asking about Jeffrey Epstein while he met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House Tuesday. 

ABC News reporter Mary Bruce asked Trump if the House of Representatives even needs to vote on releasing the Epstein files, when the president could just order the release of the files himself. That set Trump off.

“People are wise to your hoax, and ABC is, your company, your crappy company is one of the perpetrators. I’ll tell you something, I’ll tell you something, I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and so wrong. And we have a great commissioner, a chairman, who should take a look at that,” Trump said, referring to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who has taken a combative approach against TV news stations critical of the president. 

“I think when you’re 97 percent negative to Trump and then Trump wins in a landslide, that means obviously your news is not credible, and you’re not credible as a reporter,” Trump said, saying that the reporter should look at Democrats, particularly Harvard professor Larry Summers and Democratic benefactor Reid Hoffman. 

“Those are the people, but they don’t get any press, they don’t get any news, and you’re not after the radical left because you’re a radical left network,” Trump added. “But I think the way you ask the question with the anger and the meanness is terrible. You ought to go back and learn how to be a reporter.” 

Earlier in the meeting, Trump became enraged after Bruce asked both him and MBS about U.S. intelligence reports that the Saudi crown prince ordered the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

ABC’s parent company, Disney, paid $16 million to Trump in December to settle a defamation lawsuit, but it doesn’t appear to have earned the network any goodwill with the president. Instead, it has only emboldened Trump to ignore any questions he doesn’t like. With Carr’s help at the FCC, the Trump administration has gone after more TV networks, even trying to muzzle late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.

Trump may have been trying to distract the public from Epstein and threaten any other reporters who wanted to ask about the billionaire child sex predator. What he really did is show he’s willing to undermine the freedom of the press for his own benefit.  

The Senate voted unanimously Tuesday to release the Epstein files, sending the measure to Donald Trump’s desk.

Trump has said he will sign the bill. Shortly before the Senate announced the bill had passed, he posted on Truth Social that he didn’t care when the chamber voted on the measure.

“I just don’t want Republicans to take their eyes off all of the Victories that we’ve had,” he wrote, citing his tariff policy, his immigration policies, and his budget policy, among others.

After months of dragging their feet, House Republicans—minus one—voted earlier Tuesday to release the Epstein files.

The majority of the caucus sided with Democrats, voting in favor of the Epstein Files Transparency Act (H.R.4405), advancing the effort to the Senate, where its fate has yet to be decided. But Republican Representative Clay Higgins struck out on his own.

The final vote was 427–1. Five representatives did not vote. Lawmakers standing on the Democratic side of the chamber broke out in cheers and applause after the measure passed.

Hours after the bill passed that vote, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made a motion to pass the motion by unanimous consent once it is transmitted from the House. There were no objections, meaning the bill will automatically go to Trump now.

Higgins wrote moments before the vote that he had been a “no” vote on the matter “since the beginning.”

“What was wrong with the bill three months ago is still wrong today. It abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America,” Higgins argued on social media. “As written, this bill reveals and injures thousands of innocent people—witnesses, people who provided alibis, family members, etc.

“If enacted in its current form, this type of broad reveal of criminal investigative files, released to a rabid media, will absolutely result in innocent people being hurt. Not by my vote,” the Louisiana lawmaker continued. “The Oversight Committee is conducting a thorough investigation that has already released well over 60,000 pages of documents from the Epstein case. That effort will continue in a manner that provides all due protections for innocent Americans.

“If the Senate amends the bill to properly address [the] privacy of victims and other Americans, who are named but not criminally implicated, then I will vote for that bill when it comes back to the House,” he added.

But the victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring are not aligned with Higgins’s opinion. Speaking with reporters before the vote on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, a group of survivors demanded that Congress unequivocally pass the bill and unlock public access to the Epstein case files.

Jeffrey Epstein, a New York socialite who orchestrated an international child sex trafficking ring to service the sick desires of the ultrawealthy, is believed to have abused hundreds of young girls.

His network included an array of high-profile, powerful individuals, including former treasury secretary and ex–Harvard University President Larry Summers, Victoria’s Secret chief executive Les Wexner, Wall Street titan Leon Black, British ex-Prince Andrew (now Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor), and President Donald Trump.

The House Oversight Committee released more than 20,000 documents Wednesday that it had obtained from Epstein’s estate. The documents included multiple mentions of Trump and his ascent to the White House, including one exchange in which Epstein noted: “Of course [Trump] knew about the girls.”

For months, just four House Republicans had penned their signatures on a discharge petition demanding transparency into the investigation of Epstein and his potential associates. Those conservative lawmakers include Representatives Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace, and Lauren Boebert.

At least two members of that cohort—Mace and Boebert—were personally courted by Trump last week in a last-minute bid to convince them to change their minds about the petition, despite the fact that Trump has repeatedly washed the publicity effort as a Democrat-invented “hoax.”

In the end, Massie was the lone Republican to co-sponsor the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who for months parroted Trump’s talking points, sang a very different tune on Tuesday. “Now, at least in recent days, at least every member of the chamber … is in for complete transparency,” he said ahead of the vote.

This story has been updated.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has tapped Senate Majority Leader John Thune to take up the torch of blocking the release of the government’s files on Jeffrey Epstein.

During a press conference Tuesday, Johnson announced that he would support the House petition to release the government’s files on the alleged sex trafficker—but not without throwing one final wrench in the plans of lawmakers who support the measure.

The staunch Donald Trump ally hinted that Republicans would likely attempt to stall the measure in the Senate, saying that he had been in contact with his upper-chamber counterpart to express his lingering concerns about the bill.

“And of course they share those concerns, as well,” Johnson said. “And so I am very confident that when this moves forward in the process, if and when it is processed in the Senate—which is no certainty that that will be—they will take the time methodically to do what we have not been allowed to do in the House: to amend this discharge petition, and to make sure that these protections are there.”

It’s worth noting that if Johnson had simply put this legislation to a vote, instead of requiring lawmakers to seek a discharge petition, he could have potentially amended the bill.

Among supposed concerns about not protecting the identities of victims, or not adequately preventing the release of child sexual abuse materials, Johnson has expressed fears that the release could potentially disclose “non-credible allegations” and risk “creating new victims.”

Representative Thomas Massie, one of the lawmakers behind the petition, said Tuesday Johnson’s so-called concerns were a “red herring” and warned they could simply be another “delay tactic.”

The Kentucky Republican also criticized Johnson’s claim about “non-credible allegations” in a post on X.

“Do not let the Senate add an amendment to avoid disclosing those rich and powerful men who have evaded justice for so many years. Is Johnson calling all victims ‘non-credible?’” Massie wrote.

Johnson’s 180 on the Epstein petition itself isn’t particularly surprising, considering that Trump has also changed his tune, in order to emphasize the convicted sex offender’s ties to Democratic figures. Meanwhile, the Republican Party has fractured over some members’ blatant unwillingness to move forward with the files’ release.

Ahead of the vote, victims rallied for the files’ release, with one calling Trump a “national embarrassment.”

President Trump gave a lavish welcome to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on his visit to the U.S. Wednesday, complete with a red carpet reception at the White House.

Bin Salman technically isn’t Saudi Arabia’s head of state, as that title belongs to his father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, but that didn’t stop Trump from bringing out military cavalry, sparing no exceptions to the pomp that normally accompanies a state visit.

MBS, as he is commonly known, has not visited the United States since Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of the crown prince and a Washington Post columnist, was murdered at a Saudi consulate in 2018 and then dismembered with a bone saw. At the White House, Trump glossed over that scandal, saying, “What he’s done is incredible, in terms of human rights and everything else.”

When a reporter asked about the U.S. intelligence’s conclusion that MBS had personally ordered Khashoggi’s killing, Trump asked who the reporter was with and rushed to defend the crown prince.

“He knew nothing about it. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking something like that,” Trump said, later adding, “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about, whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.”

MBS is in Washington for defense and business deals, including the sale of F-35 jets to the country, opposed by Israel, which insists on Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with it beforehand. Saudi Arabia says it wants Israel to make clear and definitive steps toward establishing a Palestinian state before it joins other Arab countries in the Abraham Accords.

In the meantime, though, Trump just cares that Saudi money gets spent in the U.S. and on his family’s businesses. Saudi Arabia’s poor human rights record doesn’t matter to the president, as long he sees oil and dollar signs.