Johnson Cuts Short House Business to Avoid Vote on Releasing Epstein Files

Speaker Mike Johnson announced on Tuesday that he was cutting short the week’s legislative business and sending the House home early for the summer on Wednesday to avoid having to hold votes on releasing files related to the accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Mr. Johnson’s move will, for now, deny Democrats the chance to force procedural votes that would call on the Justice Department to make the information public. It reflected how deep divisions among Republicans on the matter have paralyzed the House, where G.O.P. lawmakers are trying to avoid another politically perilous vote on an issue that is confounding President Trump and roiling the MAGA base.

“We’re done being lectured on transparency,” Mr. Johnson said at a news conference, where the typically unflappable speaker appeared frustrated.

As he wrapped up his final news conference before a summer recess that was to have begun on Friday and lasted until September, Mr. Johnson complained about “endless efforts to politicize the Epstein investigation.”

He insisted that Republicans “have been intellectually consistent the entire time,” and added that “we’re not going to play political games with this.”

Mr. Johnson’s decision to shut down the House early was the latest example of how the speaker has in many ways ceded the chamber’s independence in order to please or avoid angering Mr. Trump. He has deferred to the president on matters large and small, including when it comes to Congress’s spending power. He quietly maneuvered this year to yield the House’s ability to weigh in on Mr. Trump’s tariffs, in order to spare Republicans from having to cast politically tricky votes on whether to end them.

In the case of the Epstein files, House Republicans are once again surrendering their institutional autonomy to appease a vengeful president. Afraid to cross Mr. Trump, but equally fearful of right-wing supporters who are demanding the release of the material, they chose to simply pack up and go home. In doing so, they also undermined their own agenda, punting what were to have been their last substantive votes before the summer break.

Republicans had planned action this week on a measure targeting some undocumented immigrants, a bill that would ease environmental rules and a rollback of some Biden-era regulations. Those votes were all put on hold after the House Rules Committee, the powerful panel controlled by the speaker that determines which legislation reaches the floor, was upended by the Epstein issue.

They have been under pressure from constituents who have been flooding their offices with phone calls and targeting them on social media, demanding they fight harder for the release of the Epstein files.

All but one Republican on the Rules Committee, Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina, had voted against allowing the matter to be considered.

On Monday, when Democrats vowed to force such a vote again, as part of a routine measure to allow debate on unrelated legislation, Republicans did not want to go on the record on the issue again and risk more backlash from their conservative base or getting crosswise with Mr. Trump.

“The Democrats want to make an issue of it every minute,” Mr. Norman said on Tuesday. “It’s just theater; it’s a waste of time. It’s not a good use of our time to sit there for hours on end while they put up amendment after amendment.”

The result was that the House could not move ahead on any substantive legislation. Instead, Republicans planned to wrap up votes by Wednesday on some noncontroversial bills and end legislative business later that afternoon.

Democrats were quick to try to capitalize on the entire saga, suggesting that Republicans were trying to hide something.

“They do whatever Donald Trump tells them to do,” Representative Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said in an interview. “Donald Trump has done a complete 180, and we’ve got to hold them to the fire. The public is interested. I think the public is on our side here.”

A spokeswoman for the House Majority PAC, Katarina Flicker, said in a statement: “Mike Johnson just confirmed what we already know: House Republicans will do anything to protect the elite, powerful and well connected.”

The drama has placed Mr. Johnson in the difficult position of trying to keep his members in line without Mr. Trump acting as his muscle. Last week, Mr. Johnson said the Epstein material needed to come out, even as the president was telling lawmakers to move on — an acknowledgment of the pressure MAGA voters were exerting on their representatives. But by Monday, he had reverted to his more familiar posture of deferring to the president.

Mr. Johnson said he would not schedule a vote this summer on releasing the Epstein files, arguing that Mr. Trump and his administration needed “space” to determine how to proceed. On Tuesday, he claimed that House Republicans were united on the issue and that they needed to be “judicious and careful about protecting the innocent.”

But they appeared to be as divided as ever on it.

“Crimes have been committed,” said Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia. “If there’s no justice and no accountability, people are going to get sick of it. That’s where people largely are.”

And Mr. Norman criticized his leaders for “stalling” on the matter.

“The American people deserve action, not excuses,” he wrote on social media on Tuesday. “Let’s vote on it before August recess and get it DONE!!”

Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, said he still planned to circumvent House Republican leaders and try to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files in September, with the help of Democrats, using a maneuver known as a discharge petition.

“He just told us in there to stick their heads in the sand about this Epstein thing,” Mr. Massie said after leaving Republicans’ weekly conference meeting on Tuesday morning. Mr. Johnson, he said, had offered members no clear explanation of why a vote on the matter needed to be delayed.

Mr. Johnson, in response, tried to paint Mr. Massie as the problem child.

“Some here are much more frustrating than others,” Mr. Johnson said. “I don’t know how his mind works; I don’t know what he’s thinking.” He ended his tirade against Mr. Massie by expressing some restrained Southern pique: “Bless his heart.”

The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday also voted to subpoena Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime partner of Mr. Epstein who is serving a 20-year sentence on a sex-trafficking conviction, for a deposition.

Representative Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican who has pushed for more transparency in the Epstein case, introduced the motion to subpoena Ms. Maxwell, and several Republican members supported it, including the panel’s chairman, Representative James Comer of Kentucky.

Ms. Greene also expressed skepticism about Ms. Maxwell’s testimony, noting that she was most likely “bartering for something,” like a presidential pardon.

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