House Votes to Release the Jeffrey Epstein Files, Humiliating
Trump
It’s an embarrassment for Trump, who had promised to
release the Epstein files before then calling the scandal a “hoax.” A Trump
official admits, “We lost this one badly.”
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Lawmakers on Tuesday voted to release the Jeffrey Epstein
files, after Donald Trump and his Republican allies spent months trying to
block the measure, with the president repeatedly calling his Epstein scandal a
“hoax.”
The House of Representatives voted 427-1 to approve the Epstein discharge petition, which was offered by Democrat Ro Khanna and Republican Thomas Massie. The Epstein Files Transparency Act, which must still pass the Senate, is designed to force the Trump administration to release the Justice Department’s files on Epstein, the convicted sex offender and former longtime Trump friend who allegedly committed suicide in jail during the president’s first term.
The vote is a humiliation for Trump, who personally pledged
to release the Epstein files before abruptly changing course and leading a
desperate, months-long campaign to try to torpedo any prospect of transparency.
Even within the confines of the cultish Trump administration, there was an
acute level of self-awareness about how much of a knock this vote has been to
the president’s iron-fisted control over his party.
After Trump’s fake reversal this past weekend – in which he claimed “I DON’T CARE” whether the files are all released and that he’d previously said House Republicans should vote to do so (he hadn’t) – three senior Trump officials told Zeteo that the president was merely trying to save face after being told by his advisers that mass defections were all but inevitable.
“We lost this one badly,” one of the administration
officials said.
Trump repeatedly attacked Massie, and aggressively tried to peel away the handful of Republican colleagues who cosponsored the discharge petition. Trump officials recently brought Rep. Lauren Boebert to the White House for a special meeting in the Situation Room. The White House implicitly threatened to withhold support for Rep. Nancy Mace’s bid for governor in South Carolina. Trump publicly un-endorsed Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, branding her a “traitor.”
But after a new round of Epstein files were released – and more questions were raised about Trump’s past relationship with the “most infamous pedophile in American history” – Republicans were forced into deciding between going down with the ship and siding with predators, or ceding to the public. Last week, Khanna told Zeteo that up to 50 Republicans were already set to vote to release the files.
In the lead-up to the House vote, as it became clear Trump
would lose, the president ordered the Justice Department to begin a new Epstein
investigation – one purely focused on prominent Democrats with ties to the
disgraced financier. It’s likely the point of this was not simply to muddy the
waters, but rather to create a basis for the DOJ to avoid releasing the Epstein
files altogether.
Next, the president publicly backtracked on his effort to
block the House vote – though perhaps less so than many observers gave him
credit for. In a Truth Social post on Sunday, he wrote that “House Republicans
should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide.”
The reversal put Trump loyalists, who were already in a
difficult position, in another awkward spot: After months of being loyal foot
soldiers for their dear leader, insisting they would not entertain voting for
the “Epstein hoax,” Trump ordered them to vote to release the files. In the
end, 216 House Republicans voted for the measure. Only one – Rep. Clay
Higgins of Louisiana – voted no.
But Trump’s Truth Social post hinted that his DOJ will continue to impede
transparency. He wrote that “the House Oversight Committee can have whatever
they are legally entitled to.” However, the new Epstein investigation
that Trump demanded on Friday – which his attorney
general quickly agreed to open – may well create a legal obstacle.
Still, the vote on the Epstein discharge petition is an
embarrassing defeat for the president, who has enjoyed near total control over
Republicans in Congress. Why would Trump change his posture on the measure so
dramatically at the eleventh hour? Trump was about to be on the wrong end of
potentially dozens of defections. He tried to save face by blessing the measure
– attempting to create the illusion that he didn’t lose.
No one believes this vote is what Trump wanted. But it’s
the logical endpoint of what brought Trump here in the first place: his promise
to release the Epstein files. Trump apparently thought this pledge was mere
slop for the MAGA base, rather than something that his supporters and the
public wanted to see happen.
Now, the Epstein files measure heads to the Senate. Its
prospect of passage there is not yet clear. Senate Republicans could stall or
refuse to hold a vote, or they could water down the legislation to mute its
impact.
Even if the Epstein discharge petition ultimately passes
the Senate, and Trump were to sign it, it appears unlikely he’ll allow the
government to release its files on his former friend, the pedophile.
Speaking about Trump’s supposed last-minute endorsement of the Epstein
files measure, Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett tells Zeteo, “I think it’s a joke and
a game.”
“This is a guy that threatened so many of his allies. This
is a guy who literally has released his dogs on one of his closest allies,
Marjorie Taylor Greene, and doesn’t care,” Crockett says. “I don’t think that
[Trump] somehow woke up and somehow now is moral. I think that this is a game,
and I don’t expect that we’re going to get real transparency even after this
vote.”
