By Nick Karmia and Grace Berry/Cronkite News:
WASHINGTON – Six days after Tucson Rep. Adelita Grijalva finally took office, breaking a logjam over the Epstein files, the House voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to release those files.
Hours later, a unanimous Senate sent the bill to President Donald Trump’s desk.
The House vote was 427-1 – an astonishing outcome given how hard Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson had worked to keep a lid on investigative documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender with links to Trump, prominent Democrats, and British royalty.
Just four House Republicans signed the petition to force the vote over the speaker’s wishes. None were from Arizona, though all six Arizona Republicans supported the bill. So did all three Arizona Democrats. Grijalva provided the final vote needed.
“The survivors deserve justice. The American people deserve the truth,” she said on the House floor shortly before the vote.
Epstein, a wealthy financier, died in jail in 2019 while awaiting federal sex trafficking charges.
Survivors of his abuse were on hand at the Capitol for the abrupt victory. Outside, more than half a dozen held pictures of what they looked like when Epstein or one of his many influential friends exploited them. Some were as young as 15 at the time.
“I know everybody sees us today as grown adults, but we are fighting for the children that were abandoned and left behind in the reckoning,” said Haley Robson, one of the survivors.
Ahead of the vote, Rep. David Schweikert, R-Fountain Hills, said he supported transparency but viewed the fight over the Epstein files as a “shiny object” and even a “fetish” for the political class.
“Of course it’s news,” he said, but added that in his view, the long-term solvency of Social Security is far more pressing. “That’s the story of our time.”
Grijalva took office on Nov. 12 when Johnson reconvened the House for the first time since Sept. 19 to ratify a deal ending a lengthy government shutdown. That ended a record-setting 50-day wait after she won a special election to succeed her late father.
The same day, the House Oversight Committee released reams of emails subpoenaed from Epstein’s estate, including one from 2019, months before his suicide, in which he indicated that Trump was aware of the sexual abuse of underage girls before his 2008 conviction.
Democrats accused Johnson of delaying Grijalva’s oath of office to stall the release of potentially more damning files held by the Justice Department.
“We would have done it 50 days ago,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., leading the Democrats’ side in the floor debate.
Trump promised during the 2024 campaign to release the files, but after taking office, he began to downplay the uproar as a “hoax.” He encouraged supporters to move on, but they did not.
On Sunday, with many House Republicans signaling they would vote to release the files, Trump reversed his stance and urged approval.
He also ordered the Justice Department to investigate any links between Epstein and such prominent Democrats as former President Bill Clinton and Larry Summers, a former Treasury Secretary and Harvard University president.
Clinton never visited the private island where much of the abuse took place, Epstein himself said in his emails. Summers apologized Monday for a number of sexist messages, saying he was “deeply ashamed.”
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert – who, like Schweikert, is seeking the GOP nomination for governor next year – rejected the idea that Trump’s directive amounted to meddling in law enforcement.
“I view that more as a suggestion,” he said. But he added, “There are ostensibly a whole bunch of other people that might have had some kind of connection with this.”
On July 15, House Republicans – including the six from Arizona – killed a Democratic effort to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files.
Eight days later, Biggs was one of two Republicans who opposed a move by a House Oversight subcommittee to subpoena the Justice Department’s Epstein files. The other was Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La. – chair of that subcommittee, an ardent Trump supporter, and the only member of the House voting no on Tuesday.
The Copper State Victory Committee, a Democratic group working to re-elect Gov. Katie Hobbs, slammed Biggs and Schweikert after Tuesday’s vote. Both, spokesperson Nicholas Simões Machado said in a statement, have gone out of their way “to stay in the good graces of their party bosses at the expense of victims of sexual abuse.”
Biggs was one of many Republicans who stoked conspiracy theories about Epstein and whether powerful interests had silenced him.
“We want to get to the bottom of it,” he told Fox News a week after Epstein died in jail. “There’s no one who believes it was a suicide.”
Three months later, Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Bullhead City, posted a series of tweets during Trump’s impeachment trial that turned out to be an acrostic, the first letter of each post spelling out “Epstein didn’t kill himself.”
Gosar and Rep. Abe Hamadeh, R-Scottsdale, both declined repeated requests to discuss the Epstein case.
Democrats spent the day accusing Republicans of cowardice, giving public support to the release of the Epstein files only after Trump gave the nod.
“The walls are closing in on Donald Trump and his rich and powerful friends who either abused or raped children or were enabling and complicit in these heinous crimes for decades,” Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Phoenix, said in a floor speech. “Here is the truth: Donald Trump could direct the Department of Justice to release the files today. He is choosing not to. … What is Trump hiding? Why not release the files today?”
Biggs said he didn’t sign the petition out of concern that “somebody might be totally innocent and yet have their name in there.”
Rep. Eli Crane, R-Oro Valley, noted that although he never signed the discharge petition, an effort co-led by Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie, he did sign on in July as a co-sponsor on a Massie bill calling for the release of the files.
“I represent voters that do think there’s been a systemic issue of lack of transparency in this town for a long time. And that’s why I want to see the release of those files,” Crane said.
Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Tucson, said he was “happy to support it” but didn’t join the discharge petition because he prefers to save that tool for “very unique situations.”
Epstein attended Trump’s wedding to his second wife, Marla Maples, in 1993. The two were seen together at a 1999 Victoria’s Secret fashion event.
Trump told New York Magazine in 2002 that he thought Epstein was “a terrific guy.”
Epstein pleaded guilty in June 2008 to charges of soliciting prostitution. He was arrested on far more serious federal sex crimes in 2019.
Johnson, in a rare floor speech by a House speaker, called the abuse survivors “heroic” for speaking out.
He agreed that “justice has been delayed for too long,” but rejected allegations that Republicans had stalled to protect Trump.
For four years, “the Biden Department of Justice had these files, and no one on this side who is breathless today about the urgency of this release ever said a word about it,” he said. “The president had nothing to do with it. He’s been very clear, and he has nothing to hide, and that’s why he’s endorsed the vote today.”
