The Republican Epstein Strategy Is Failing

[Passages]

We’re now on the third attempt to deflect from releasing the files. This one doesn’t appear to be working either.

by David Dayen September 3, 2025

The reason it feels like Congress doesn’t exist anymore is because it functionally doesn’t, but also because this summer vacation was extended. House Republicans tucked tail and left early after fearing the possibility of having to vote for transparency about the biggest underage sex ring in U.S. history, which gives you a good sense of where we are with that party right now.

House Speaker Mike Johnson had six weeks to figure out how to manage the intra-party rebellion over the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Republican members were still getting an earful at home, so ducking a vote wasn’t practical. But Johnson needed to uphold his prime directive of acting as a human shield for the president and keeping his name out of any revelations.

So after weeks of rumination, here’s what Johnson came up with: a resolution, hastily added to the week’s floor voting schedule on Monday, that would “direct” the House Oversight Committee to continue investigating the federal cases against Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, which is already in progress. In other words, Johnson would have the House vote to do something it is effectively already doing.

The word you may be grasping for is “misdirection.”

https://prospect.org/justice/epstein-republican-congress-release-files/

[Wiz Imp]

1. Somebody mentioned this at the press conference. I think it was Massie.

It's not going to work. The victims along with Massie & Khanna will settle for nothing less than having their legislation pass. Everyone who spoke kept saying this wasn't about politics which should be true. But it is very telling that so far every single Democrat has signed the discharge petition and only 3 Republicans have. There's more than 200 additional Republicans in the House and they only need 2 more to sign, but so far they haven't gotten them.