The lead GOP co-sponsor behind a resolution that would force the Justice Department to release the entirety of its collected evidence related to Jeffrey Epstein said Sunday that his push was to help the convicted pedophile’s victims and would only grow stronger in the coming weeks.
On NBC’s Meet the Press, Rep. Thomas Massie appeared alongside the resolution’s lead Democratic co-sponsor, Rep. Ro Khanna, as the two promoted a resolution that would force Attorney General Pam Bondi to release “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” related to the Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell investigations.
The issue has become divisive among the Trump-aligned right, especially on podcasting and new media platforms, as Donald Trump angrily insists that his supporters must move on from the investigation and has sought to distract MAGAworld with new allegations about Barack Obama and the investigation into his own 2016 run for the White House.
Massie told moderator Kristen Welker on Sunday that “the release of the Epstein files is emblematic of what Trump ran for” and explained that the president’s MAGA base expected results.
“There seems to be a class of people beyond the law, beyond the judicial system…we all thought that when Trump was elected, he would be the bull in the china shop and break that all up,” said Massie.
“People who were allegedly working on this weren’t sincere in their efforts,” Massie said. “Somebody should ask Speaker Mike Johnson, why did he recess Congress early so that he didn’t have to deal with the Epstein issue?”
“Politics is the art of the doable. There’s enough public pressure right now that we can get 218 votes and force this to a vote on the floor,” said Massie.
He also firmly rejected a DOJ memo explaining the administration’s position against further releases of information from the Epstein files, despite the very public promises of Bondi and others to do the opposite. In the memo, agency officials said that explicit imagery involving children was “intertwined” throughout the files collected by the Justice Department, as allegedly was identifying information about more than 1,000 victims of Epstein and Maxwell’s criminal acts.
“That’s a straw man [argument],” Massie responded on Sunday, after Welker read part of the memo. “Ro [Khanna] and I carefully crafted this legislation so that the victims’ names would be redacted, and that no child pornography will be released.”
This is a developing story. More to follow…
