The House is canceling votes and sending members home early this week as the chamber is paralyzed over the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) assuring Republicans that the Trump administration is taking care of it.
A whip notice sent Tuesday morning alerted that previously scheduled votes for Thursday are canceled, meaning House members will take their last votes on Wednesday afternoon before leaving Capitol Hill for a monthlong August recess.
This comes after the House Rules Committee indefinitely suspended its meeting Monday night as Republican leadership grapples with how to approach releasing all of the information related to the disgraced and now-deceased financier.
Republican members are receiving extreme pressure from their conservative base to release the files, something President Donald Trump promised he would do. But that has since been upended after the Department of Justice released a memo stating there was no “client list” nor more information to provide, fracturing the GOP over the issue.
But Johnson said on Monday he wouldn’t bring an Epstein-related measure to the floor ahead of the August recess. On Tuesday, he said the conference wants to give the Trump administration time to handle the issue, and members said he conveyed a similar message during their weekly GOP conference meeting.
“There’s a reason behind what we’re doing here,” the speaker said during a press conference. “I’ve been on record, very clear, that I believe in maximum transparency. I think every single House Republican will say the same thing. …We also understand the other part of that duty is that we have to protect innocent victims.”
Both Trump and the DOJ have called on the federal judge who oversaw the grand jury for the Epstein case to unseal the testimony, as his “Make America Great Again” base begins to turn on the president’s administration for not releasing the files. Among those are conservative influencers, who gained popularity during the 2024 election and credit themselves with Trump’s win.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) are among the handful of congressional Republicans who are pushing for the release of the files. Massie introduced a bill, cosponsored with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), that would direct the DOJ to release all of the documents to the public.
Johnson won’t bring Massie’s bill to the floor, so Massie and Khanna are resorting to a discharge petition to force a vote likely after the August recess. A discharge petition needs 218 signatures.
The speaker has said there is “no daylight” between the White House and the House on the Epstein issue, and Massie told reporters that that’s a problem.
“His strategy is just to do whatever the White House tells him, and that can be okay sometimes, and sometimes it’s not good,” Massie said.
Massie said he hasn’t received an explanation from leadership as to why they won’t bring his bill forward. Instead, leadership has its eyes set on a separate, non-binding resolution that passed out of the Rules Committee last week, which Massie said essentially “copied my language.”
“If they brought that resolution to the floor and it got a unanimous vote, like everybody voted for it, then it just proves that mine is very viable,” the Kentucky Republican quipped.
A vote on that resolution would not likely come until after the August recess, at which point the Trump administration could have made strides to unseal information on the files. By then, the non-binding rules resolution would be a messaging bill at best.
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) said giving the Trump administration some grace on the Epstein files is the correct move. He said he thinks the president hasn’t made a mistake in dragging out promises of action for months.
“At the end of the day, they will prove that everything will come out,” Norman told reporters. “And if it takes 30 days, it may take longer than that. The main thing is they’re not going to stonewall. President Trump wants everything out, and he will get it out, and it’s the right thing to do.”
However, Norman, who is considering a run for governor, later put out a post to X criticizing GOP leadership for not moving on the non-binding Epstein resolution before recess.
“I led Republicans in a serious resolution — that protects victims — to expose the truth about the Epstein files, just like President Trump promised,” Norman said. “But leadership is stalling. The American people deserve action, not excuses. Let’s vote on it before August recess and get it DONE!!”
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), who has also called for transparency on the files, unanimously passed a motion on Tuesday to subpoena Epstein associate and convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell to appear before the Oversight Committee for a deposition.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said she thinks pausing House votes on Epstein-related measures is the “right thing to do” as they wait for the courts to unseal transcripts.
“I’m a cosponsor of Thomas Massie’s resolution, I’m all for voting on it,” Greene told reporters. “I’m all for transparency, so, I mean, we just have to be a little patient.”
Republican leaders have tried to turn the tables on Democrats for the Rules Committee’s canceled meeting and the files still being unreleased. Johnson said they have “no moral high ground” because they “sat on everything” for four years and did not take steps to release the files.
Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) echoed Johnson, stating the House is waiting to see what happens from the courts, accusing Democrats of wanting to move full steam ahead without ensuring that victims will be protected.
“The Democrats didn’t care about that,” Scalise told reporters. “Of course, the Democrats didn’t care about any of this. They could have released this when they were sitting on the documents for four years. So we’re trying to get it resolved properly, where you protect the victims.”
Scalise said earlier on Monday that the House wouldn’t go on recess early, noting that many committees are now “back to the other items that they wanted to take care of” that were on hold to pass the “big beautiful bill.”
“If we adjourned early, we would lose a lot of that committee work,” Scalise said.
A little over an hour later, a whip notice went out that the House would be recessing early.
EPSTEIN DRAMA PUTS KEY HOUSE VOTES ON ICE
This puts Republicans in a precarious position, as they will leave Washington for five weeks and return on Sept. 2, with a government shutdown looming at the end of that month. With Republicans focusing on appropriations and also messaging the “big beautiful bill” to constituents, infighting over the Epstein files is something that GOP members cannot afford.
“He’s sticking his own head in the sand and encouraging the conference to stick their head in the sand, and I think that’s a bad move,” Massie said of Johnson. “I would advise people, before they go leave here for August recess, because they can’t sign [the discharge petition] yet, they should co-sponsor it, so that when they get asked at their town halls and their fundraisers and at the grocery store and at the beach, ‘What are you doing,’ they have an answer.”
Ally Goetz and David Sivak contributed to this report.