US House to vote next week on bill compelling release of Epstein files

Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, said on Wednesday he would put the bill compelling the release of government files related to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on the House floor next week.

“We are gonna put that on the floor for [a] full vote next week, [as] soon as we get back,” Johnson told reporters, as the chamber gathered to debate legislation to reopen the government.

Johnson, who opposes the bill, made the announcement just hours after swearing in Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva, who took her oath of office seven weeks after she won a late September special election to succeed her father, the longtime representative Raúl Grijalva, who died in March.

Grijalva’s swearing-in cleared the path for the vote to release the Epstein files, as she became the 218th and final signature on a discharge petition that automatically triggers a House floor vote on legislation demanding the justice department release the files. In her floor remarks on Wednesday, Grijalva said: “Justice cannot wait another day. Adelante.”

Under the rules governing discharge petitions, Johnson would not have been mandated to require a vote until early December, so his announcement that the vote would take place next week is earlier than expected.

Republicans are reportedly bracing for “a significant chunk of the conference” to vote for the bill, according to Politico. Don Bacon of Nebraska, Tim Burchett of Tennessee and Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania have expressed they would do so.

Epstein died in 2019, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, in what the government declared was a suicide. Though Trump has long flirted with conspiracy theories alleging that he was at the center of a larger plot to procure minors for global elites, the justice department earlier this year announced it would release no further details about the case, prompting an uproar for files related to the investigation into his activities be made public.

Even if the bill passes the House, it still needs to get through the Senate and be signed by Trump. Senate leaders have shown no indication they will bring it up for a vote, and Trump has decried the effort as a “Democrat hoax”.

Chris Stein contributed reporting