(The Hill) — Lawmakers in the House have secured enough signatures on a discharge petition to force a vote on the floor regarding the release of files tied to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., have led the measure seeking transparency about the deceased financier’s relationships — including with President Donald Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing — and justice for Epstein’s accusers.
Next week, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is expected to hold a vote allowing all 435 members of the lower chamber to decide whether they believe the Justice Department should release the entirety of unclassified communications and documents related to Epstein’s dealings, in addition to information regarding his death behind bars.
The measure looks likely to pass given support from all of the chamber’s Democrats, and the handful of Republicans who broke with their party to back the discharge petition.
On the floor, it is possible more Republicans will vote for the measure. Khanna has predicted as many as 50 Republicans could back it.
But even if the measure passes the House, it faces an uphill climb after that.
Here’s what would happen next.
A Senate vote
The bill will have to get through the Senate if it does pass the House, which will be no easy task.
A total of 60 senators would need to vote in favor of taking up the bill, due to the Senate’s filibuster rule. That means that if all 47 Democratic senators vote in favor, at least 13 Republicans would need to approve the effort.
It will likely be challenging to get 13 GOP senators to vote in favor of the bill.
Backing the legislation would move it to the White House, which is an embarrassment Trump will want to avoid.
Republicans in the Senate in general have deferred to Trump and have not been in a mood to take him on.
As controversy swirled over the summer with some in the president’s MAGA-aligned base alleging the administration was hiding information related to Epstein, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he would leave comments about the files “up to [Department of Justice] and to the FBI.”
Other GOP senators have signaled opposition.
“When we start dictating to the Department of Justice what they can and can’t do, there’s a clear separation of power,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., said in July, objecting to a separate Democratic resolution tied to the Epstein files.
“We’re the legislative branch. That’s what we do. We make laws. We can’t dictate to other branches on what they must and how they must do their job.”
In September, Thune said the DOJ “has already released tons of files related to this matter.”
“I trust them in terms of having the confidence that they’ll get as much information out there as possible in a way that protects the rights of the victims,” Thune added, according to the Associated Press.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer previously attempted to hold a vote on the release of the Epstein files in September, but Republicans struck the measure.
Trump would have to sign it
To have the legislation actually compel the Justice Department to release files tied to Epstein, Trump would have to sign a bill once it is approved by the Senate.
This is difficult to imagine.
The president can veto the bill — a near certainty if it gets to that step — which can be overturned by a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate.
Trump has been questioned about his past connection to the sex offender, who frequently visited the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Trump has denied any involvement with Epstein’s dealings and denied having any knowledge of Epstein’s victims during the span of their relationship.
However, a set of emails released Wednesday included an allegation from Epstein that the president “knew about the girls.” In another email from 2011, Epstein told his associate Ghislaine Maxwell that Trump was the “dog that hasn’t barked” and “spent hours” at his house with a victim of his sex-trafficking ring.
“The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects. Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in response to the release of the emails.
The president said he was previously made aware that Epstein was recruiting employees at his resort to work for the financier but that he did not know about them being trafficked.
“These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Wednesday.
“What President Trump has always said is that he was from Palm Beach, and so was Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein was a member at Mar-a-Lago until President Trump kicked him out because Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile and a creep.”