BURSTRep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) on Tuesday formally filed a long-promised discharge petition to force action on his bill with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to require the Trump administration to publicly disclose files and information related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The petition, if it reaches 218 signatures, would circumvent House GOP leadership to force action on the resolution.
It would take a handful of Republicans signing on to the petition to reach that threshold — and Massie told reporters he is confident it will get there, despite what he said is a pressure campaign from GOP leadership and the White House telling Republicans to not sign on.
The underlying resolution, introduced in July following furor over the Justice Department memo asserting there would be no further disclosures in the Epstein case, has been cosponsored by 11 other Republicans.
But since that original outrage that roiled the lower chamber, the House Oversight Committee has opened a probe into the matter and House GOP leaders on Tuesday scheduled a competing vote this week for another Epstein resolution — directing the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to continue its investigation into Epstein.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said that the House is seeking “maximum transparency” into the issue and brushed off Massie’s effort, making the remarks while on his way to meet with a group of Epstein’s accusers in a bipartisan meeting.
“I would describe virtually everything Thomas Massie says as related to this issue as meaningless,” Johnson told reporters on Tuesday.
The Oversight panel kicked off an investigation into Epstein after a bipartisan uproar that followed a July memo from the Department of Justice and FBI saying they would not release any more information about the Epstein matter. The committee's probe was prompted in part by a successful Democratic-led motion to subpoena the DOJ for the “Epstein Files.” The department handed over thousands of pages of documents in response to that request in August, but Democrats on the panel said the material was mostly already public.
Massie called the competing measure a “placebo” resolution.
“Using that Oversight investigation as a placebo for the full release of these files, you run into the same situation that [Attorney General] Pam Bondi did when she gave everybody a binder. They go home, they read the binder, and they're like, we already had all this. This is all still already on the internet. And then they get more upset because somebody insulted their intelligence by giving them things they already knew,” Massie said.
“I think that's the danger that the Speaker and the Oversight Committee are running right now, is that when people find out it's a nothingburger, they're going to be even more mad,” Massie said.
Massie said that House Rules committee Chair Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) was the first member to sign his petition after he filed.