The US House of Representatives will vote next week on a petition asking the Justice Department to release the Jeffrey Epstein file. President Donald Trump and his aides have persistently tried to avoid releasing the files, even though they have been demanding their disclosure since last year’s election. The petition is doomed to failure, as it must be confirmed by the Senate and finally signed by Trump.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, despite opposition from the White House, has announced a vote next week on a separate petition demanding the Justice Department release files on the late billionaire and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, ABC television reported.
New Democratic Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva from Arizona cast the deciding vote for the petition that forced Johnson to act. It was also supported by four Republican congressmen, who hold 219 seats in the House of Representatives, while Democrats hold 214.
The petition was co-sponsored by Republican Thomas Massie along with Democrat Roy Khanna. It was also signed by his party colleagues Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert and Maryorie Taylor Green, whom US President Donald Trump tried to convince to withdraw their signatures.
Boebert even invited her to a meeting at the White House on Wednesday, where he and FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi, in the Situation Room, which is used for the most important presidential decisions, persuaded her to withdraw her signature, NBC reported, among other things. Boebert did not give in and insisted on publishing all the files.
However, the petition is doomed, as it must be approved by the Senate and ultimately signed by Trump. For Democrats, that’s enough to force Republicans to vote on releasing the dossier, which has historically been the loudest demand of Trump’s base, hoping to expose the names of prominent Democrats.
Publication was strongly requested by the current US Vice President JD Vance last year, while Trump said in numerous interviews before the election that he would do so. Democrats are therefore waiting for his explanation as to why he now opposes the announcement, according to MSNBC.
Trump called the document requests a Democratic hoax, a claim echoed by his spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt on Wednesday, when Democrats released some of Epstein’s emails with former associate Ghislaine Maxwell and author Michael Wolff from before Trump took office. Epstein claims in the e-mails, among other things, that Trump knew about the abuse of the girls and that he spent hours alone with one of them.
Epstein was arrested in 2019 on charges of sexual abuse of a minor, and then committed suicide in New York. Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison for her role in human trafficking for sexual exploitation. On Wednesday, Republican members of the House Oversight Committee released more than 20,000 documents obtained by Congress under a subpoena from Epstein’s estate.
Now it’s about releasing tens of thousands of pages of files collected by the Department of Justice. Democrats insist that Trump is hiding something, even though there is no evidence that the president participated in Epstein’s abuse. The public wants to prove at least that Trump lied when he claimed he didn’t know about the abuse. Next week, Khanna and Massie will hold a new press conference with victims of Epstein’s abuse before Congress.
(Vijesti.ba)
