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WASHINGTON — House Democrats prevented a Republican bid to force a quick vote on legislation that would require the Justice Department to release all its files on sex predator Jeffrey Epstein, apparently hoping to keep the controversy in the spotlight longer.
Ahead of the House vote to end the 43-day government shutdown, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) took to the floor and requested unanimous consent to immediately vote on on the Epstein bill.
The attempt failed, with Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), the senior GOPer in charge of the House floor, explaining: “The chair is constrained not to entertain the request unless cleared by the bipartisan floor and committee leaderships.”
“I tried to get the Epstein files [bill] straight to the floor, cut out all of this nonsense and the Democrats blocked it, oddly enough,” Burchett grumbled after his effort failed. “This is politics. It has nothing to do with what’s right.”
Womack was restricted by House rules from revealing which party blocked Burchett’s unanimous consent request — but the Tennessee lawmaker, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), and others insisted Democrats stood in the way.
The bill co-sponsored by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) is now due to be voted on next week.
Khanna and Massie’s bill secured sufficient support under what’s known as a discharge petition to get a vote, despite opposition from House Republican leadership.
Burchett did not sign the discharge petition, but wanted to bring the vote forward.
“I have not seen many stories written yet about the fact we put the discharge petition up for unanimous consent on the floor tonight,” Johnson vented to reporters Wednesday.
“The Democrats objected to the unanimous consent. Nobody has written a story about that. That is stunning to me.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ (D-NY) office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Massie and Khanna began pursuing their discharge petition after the FBI and DOJ publicly concluded this past July that Epstein, 66, committed suicide while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges and did not maintain a “client list” of powerful friends to whom he peddled girls as young as 14 — contraary to widespread speculation.
President Trump has repeteadly and publicly lashed out over the ongoing controversy, and did so again this week.
“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,” Trump warned on Truth Social Wednesday.
“Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap.”
That same day, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee released more than 20,000 documents obtained from Epstein’s estate.
“The Oversight Committee has been delving in deeply to the Epstein investigation,” Johnson told CNN’s “The Lead” on Monday, calling the discharge petition “a moot point.”
“There’s plenty of oversight. All of that information is going to be released to the public.”
Massie’s and Khanna’s discharge petition includes a carveout allowing the Trump administration to redact the names of the victims as well as explicit child sexual abuse materials.
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