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At 4 pm eastern time on Wednesday, the House will come back into full session for the first time since September 19.
At which point, Speaker Mike Johnson will swear in Arizona Democratic Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva — 50 days (ridiculous!) after she won a special election to replace her late father.
Once Grijalva becomes an official Member of Congress, she will sign her name to a discharge petition demanding a full House floor vote on whether or not the Department of Justice should release all of the files tied to the investigation of sex trafficker/predator Jeffrey Epstein.
Grijalva’s name will be the critical 218th on that discharge petition, making it a simply majority of the House now in favor of it. Which, because of House rules, will force Johnson’s hand; he will be required to schedule an up-or-down vote on the release of the files in short order, with a vote expected in the first week of December.
Which, in and of itself, is a very big deal. President Donald Trump, his DOJ and Republican leaders in Congress are adamantly opposed to this vote. Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel have insisted there is nothing to see in the files — a total reversal of the position they took when Joe Biden was president — and fought to keep Congress from taking up the issue.
But they will lose that fight. There will be a House vote. And assuming the 218 House Members who signed the discharge petition — every Democrat plus GOP Reps. Tom Massie, Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert — the measure will be sent to the Senate where Republicans will have to figure out if they can ignore it or whether the public attention will demand some sort of action.
That public pressure is likely to ramp up even more amid the release Wednesday by House Democrats of emails — obtained from the DOJ — in which Epstein seems to suggest that Trump knew of the illicit activities with which he is engaging.
Here’s the New York Times on that:
In one of the messages, Mr. Epstein flatly asserted that Mr. Trump “knew about the girls,” many of whom were later found by investigators to have been underage. In another, Mr. Epstein pondered how to address questions from the news media about their relationship as Mr. Trump was becoming a national political figure…
….In one email from April 2011, Mr. Epstein told Ms. Maxwell, who was later convicted on charges related to facilitating his crimes, “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump.” He added that an unnamed victim “spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned.”
To be clear: These messages do not imply Trump engaged in sex with young women and girls. Or that he trafficked them. But they do suggest Trump knew what Epstein was doing — which the president has denied.
There is NO question that House Democrats timed the leak of these emails to the day that Grijalva is getting sworn in and signing the discharge petition — as a way to lean on Republicans who now know they are going to have to vote on the release. But that fact doesn’t make the emails any less true.
The problem for Republicans is simple. The public believes there is more in these files than the Trump administration is telling them. And the stunning reversal by top Trump officials — including the president himself — on the release of the files only adds to the curiosity and questions.
Heading into an election year, do you really want to be on the side of keeping the files (or at least some of them) private? Especially when your party was loudly banging the drum to release all the files just a few years ago when a Democrat sat in the White House?
It’s a very uncomfortable spot for Republicans. And that seat is only going to get hotter between now and early December.
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