The House Passes Bill to Release the Epstein Files After Months of Objections From Trump and Mike Johnson

The House overwhelmingly passed a bill, 427-1, requiring the Department of Justice to release any remaining files related to disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — an astonishing turn of events given Republicans’ efforts to avoid a vote for months.

Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana was the sole Republican voting to block the files’ release. Survivors of Epstein’s abuse, along with their supporters, watched from the gallery.

As it became increasingly clear the bill would pass on the floor, President Donald Trump — along with many other Republicans — made a 180-degree flip on releasing the files: Trump went from calling the files a “hoax” to calling for their release in just the past few days.

While House Democrats have leaned into the files’ release, Republicans, including Trump, have largely tried to stay out of the Epstein issue for months, aside from a small group of Republicans — Reps. Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert — who held firm with their names on a discharge petition to release the files despite insults and threats from the president.

“I’ve always wondered: Where were the Republican men during this battle? We have taken five months. These three women and I have had to drag our party to this floor today to even vote on this,” Massie said, referring to the GOP women who were out front on the Epstein issue on the House floor before the vote Tuesday.

Those four Republicans joined all Democrats to put the Epstein bill on the floor through a discharge petition, which, with 218 signatures, forces a vote in the House. Normally, bills that get a vote only do so with approval from Speaker Mike Johnson and GOP leadership. A discharge petition, though rarely successful, is one of the few ways members can get legislation before the full House.

“The speaker has promised to be a rubber stamp for the president, and in doing so, has atrophied the powers of the legislative branch. I think this is an overdue moment,” Massie said before the vote. “The speaker was drug to it, kicking and screaming, but here we are, and it’s necessarily a rebalancing of the branches of government, but a rebalancing of the people against the executive branch, or against the people who have controlled Congress.”

Greene and Mace, along with several Democrats, accompanied Massie on the Democratic side of the House floor. Many shows of gratitude were exchanged between them across party lines.

“We had to sign a discharge petition, and we had to fight through intimidation, and we had to endure it for months to push that discharge petition finally to 218 to get this vote to come out,” Greene said. “This is what the American people are sick of, and rightfully so. Now, where does this go from here?”

Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters Tuesday morning that his party was not whipping the vote, but that he would be voting for it and expected most of his colleagues would be as well.

But not without any reluctance.

Republican Rep. Chip Roy, who voted for the bill, told reporters before the vote Tuesday that the discharge petition and the bill that “does in fact have flaws in it” was not the way to go about this, and that he suspects Trump is on the same page.

“We should have firmly amended the bill once there was a discharge that became political,” Roy said. “And look, it’s probably going to pass because everybody here wants transparency, but let’s not kid ourselves that what we’re doing in a fit of political rage in this town is going to potentially risk victims, including women who were the unfortunate and disastrous, tragic victims of this creep.” Roy added that this shouldn’t have become a political fight and said “more information is going to come out on the dirtiness of Democrats in this whole deal than people realize.”

Higgins had signaled last week that he likely would not vote for the bill.

“The petition itself is poorly written and it supports an endeavor that’s contrary to long standing criminal justice procedures in America so I have opposed it on that basis,” Higgins told NOTUS then.

After the vote, he posted on X that the bill “abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America.”

“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,” he wrote.

The bill now moves to the Senate, where it faces an uncertain future.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday that he “will move for the Senate to immediately take it up and pass it,” HuffPost reported.

“If Leader [John] Thune tries to bury the bill, I’ll stop him,” Schumer said.

House lawmakers expressed concern Tuesday morning that the Senate could slow down the files’ release and even amend the legislation to protect Epstein’s co-conspirators.

“This would be my concern in the Senate: They say they want to amend the bill to protect survivors. I think some of them would like to amend the bill to protect the pedophiles, and if we see any inkling of that, that bill needs to be killed immediately,” Massie told reporters.

Massie and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna spearheaded the discharge petition — which recently received the signatures needed with the delayed swearing in of Rep. Adelita Grijalva — to force the vote on the bill to release the files. The pair, along with Greene, hosted a packed news conference on Capitol grounds on Tuesday, where several Epstein survivors spoke and held up photos of themselves at the ages at which they were victimized.

Massie left the conference acknowledging a rarity under the second Trump administration: He and his colleagues in the House have leverage over the president on this issue.

“I think what he’s doing this week is strengthening his position by coming on board, and we’re glad to have him,” Massie said of Trump while at the center of a large gaggle of reporters outside the Capitol.

Asked if Massie expected revenge from Trump over the release of the files, Massie said, “No more than I’ve already experienced.”

“I don’t think — I’ve never made this about the president,” Massie said when asked if Trump may have anything to hide. “I don’t think that these files criminally implicate him. There may be additional embarrassment in there for him.”