The House of Representatives broke for August recess a day earlier than expected on Wednesday after Speaker Mike Johnson shut the doors to block moves from Democrats seeking to disclose government files on sex-trafficking financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Johnson had a very specific reason to dismiss the House early — a bipartisan discharge petition, which would allow them to force a vote on the release.
“I think it is to sort of try to let the air out of the balloon on the Epstein issue,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who teamed up with California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna on the effort, told The Independent.
But if Johnson and House GOP leadership feared the end result of that discharge petition, the Senate does not want to deal with it at all.
“I hope we don’t waste our time on that,” said Sen. John Cornyn.
“We’ve got enough to do,” the Texas Republican told The Independent Wednesday.
Cornyn is not entirely wrong.
Over the weekend, President Donald Trump said that he wanted the Senate to cancel its August recess to confirm his nominees. The Senate also needs to begin to tee-up the spending bills to avoid a government shutdown in September.
The Senate typically sees the House as childish and full of petty grievances. But there’s another reason Cornyn, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, specifically would not want to be in the Trump-Epstein blast radius: he faces a potentially bruising primary challenge against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a hardline — albeit scandal-ridden — MAGA candidate.
Any harsh questioning or a vote for the files would likely imperil Cornyn’s reelection bid.
But he’s not the only Republican senator dodging the issue. Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, noted that the Judiciary Committee brings the U.S. attorney general to testify annually.
“Now that, maybe that’s not going to happen before September, so we’re going to have these Epstein files,” he told The Independent. Grassley said he didn’t know the next steps the courts would take, but the disclosures might lead to questions from the committee.
On Wednesday, judges in Florida and New York rejected Department of Justice requests at the urging of Trump to unseal grand jury transcripts tied to Epstein, who was found dead by hanging in his New York City jail cell in 2019, in what has been ruled a suicide.
This came after Trump had requested AG Pam Bondi unseal them after a Wall Street Journal report that he allegedly sent a bawdy hand-drawn message to Epstein for his 50th birthday party, a report Trump has denied and over which he filed a $10 billon lawsuit against the WSJ, parent company News Corp and founder Rupert Murdoch.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), another member of the Judiciary Committee, expressed some openness to having convicted Epstein accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell — who is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for grooming girls and young women to be trafficked by her on-and-off boyfriend — testify before Congress.
“Whatever the bottom line is, I’m in favor of releasing it. So I think that, you know, DOJ ought to release everything that they possibly can, and I’m all for having Maxwell testify,” Hawley said.
Hawley, a Yale-educated lawyer and archconservative, also suggested a joint committee made up of House members and senators.
One of the few senators who has kept an eye on Epstein is Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA). In 2017, Kaine grilled Alex Acosta, Trump’s then-nominee to be labor secretary, about the time he was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida and gave Epstein a lenient plea deal in 2008.
Under the 2008 non-prosecution agreement, Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges in Florida of soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution. That allowed him to avert a possible life sentence, instead serving 13 months in a work-release program.
“Why was the sweetheart deal cut? I never understood that, and I never understood why President Trump nominated the guy who cut the sweetheart deal to be his cabinet secretary,” Kaine told The Independent. Kaine, who was Hillary Clinton’s running mate against Trump in 2016, also expressed openness to Hawley’s idea of a joint committee.
“I think a white House can shorten circuit, all that by just doing what they’ve said they’re going to do, and releasing the files,” he said.
Unsurprisingly, Republican Trump antagonist Sen. Thom Tillis of North carolina, who announced he would not seek re-election and told The Independent last week that the administration should “release the damn files” said he wanted to see more.
“There was much made about it,” he told The Independent. “So one of two things are true, not so much should be made of it. Or there things that we should probably know, as long as it doesn’t harm the privacy of victims, people that are not actually involved in the investigation.”
For now, the Senate will not have to worry about that, given the House is out. But it will be a looming question when the House returns.
