As the controversy over files related to sex predator Jeffrey Epstein continues to plague President Donald Trump’s administration, a new effort to make the Justice Department release the files has garnered the support of New Jersey’s entire Democratic House delegation.
Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican with an idiosyncratic streak, filed a discharge petition last night that, if it obtains 218 signatures, would circumvent House GOP leaders and force a full House vote on the release of the files. Eight of New Jersey’s House Democrats have already signed on; the ninth, Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair), hasn’t been back in Washington this week amid her campaign for governor, but her office said she plans to sign as well.
“The truth must come out,” Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark) said of the petition.
So far, the petition also has four Republicans on board, two short of the number needed assuming every House Democrat signs. Top House Republicans and the Trump administration have both strongly pushed their members to oppose the petition.
One Republican who won’t be signing on is New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis). Van Drew has been more willing than many of his GOP colleagues to push the Trump administration on the Epstein case and is a co-sponsor of the underlying bill at hand in the discharge petition, but he said that he wants the bill to go through the proper committee process and not vault straight to the House floor.
“I support maximum transparency, and we’ve got to get the information out for the sake of the victims, for the sake of the American people,” Van Drew said today. “However, this is a very, very sensitive issue, and it needs to be done in a proper way. I really support the bill, but it needs to go through the committee process.”
New Jersey’s other two Republican congressmen, Reps. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) and Chris Smith (R-Manchester), have not signed the petition either, and seem unlikely to do so.
The petition is only one of many different efforts across Capitol Hill to get answers on Epstein, a financier who was convicted of sex trafficking in 2019 and died shortly afterwards, apparently by suicide. The House Oversight Committee is conducting an investigation into the case and released thousands of pages of records yesterday, and the House approved a symbolic measure today in support of the committee’s investigation.
For Massie and Democrats – and for survivors of Epstein’s abuse themselves – those efforts aren’t enough, however. At a press conference convened by Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) outside the Capitol today, many of the women who were abused by Epstein demanded that the government release every file it has, both for their own sake and for that of the country.
“This is nothing to do with politics. This is not a blue thing or a red thing – this is an everyone thing,” said Courtney Wild, a survivor who first met Epstein when she was 14. “We need transparency. It’s time for us to see behind the curtain.”
