The most recent try by Home Democrats to pressure a vote on releasing recordsdata associated to the disgraced, late financier Jeffrey Epstein failed on Tuesday.
Democrats unsuccessfully urged the chamber to oppose a routine procedural vote — often called the movement on ordering the earlier query — since failure would have triggered a vote on Rep. Ro Khanna’s (D-Calif.) modification requiring Lawyer Common Pam Bondi to protect, compile and publish the Epstein recordsdata.
The Epstein recordsdata have been a supply of controversy in Washington — particularly the Republican Occasion — in latest days, with the MAGA base demanding its disclosure whereas President Trump directs these in his social gathering to drop the matter.
The vote on the movement ordering the earlier query is nearly at all times a routine, party-line vote, with members of the bulk social gathering voting in favor and people within the minority social gathering voting in opposition. It represents a last-chance effort for members within the minority to try to pressure consideration of sure laws.
In the long run, Republicans united and supported the procedural vote, bringing the ultimate tally to 211-210 alongside social gathering strains — clearing the bulk threshold that Democrats had been hoping to keep away from.
Democrats had framed the procedural vote as a referendum on whether or not Republicans need the Epstein recordsdata to be launched, or whether or not they would fall in step with Trump’s request.
“Republicans spent years screaming for the Epstein Files to be released. Now Donald Trump wants to hide them. Today, every R can vote to release the files. Will they give the American people transparency or block the truth to protect Trump?” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) wrote on X.
Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.), the highest Democrat on the Home Guidelines Committee, tried an identical gambit on Monday evening, forcing a vote in committee on staging a ground vote on Khanna’s modification. That effort, nevertheless, failed 4-8, although Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) notably voted in favor. He was the one GOP vote in help.
Regardless of the GOP convention’s united opposition to triggering a vote on Khanna’s modification, the social gathering is split over the Epstein recordsdata. Some hardline conservatives, significantly these near the MAGA base, are livid with the administration’s dealing with of the recordsdata and wish them to be made public, breaking with Trump’s plea that the social gathering drops the dialog.
“I would just like the files to be turned over,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) stated Tuesday morning.
Others, nevertheless, are deferring to the administration.
“I’m confident that they’ve been looked at and that, quite frankly, a fairly controversial assessment, that there isn’t a there there, that in spite of many of the things that are believed by my own base weren’t true,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) stated. “I trust the people who reported it to us and who looked at them.”
