The House of Representatives had not even been fully gavelled in when House Democrats dropped a tactical nuke on the Rotunda and released emails from the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In particular, the emails reveal that the disgraced financier and by then fairly well-known sexual predator told journalist Michael Wolff that Trump “knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.” Another email showed that he told his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, that Trump “spent hours” with one of their victims, whose name was redacted.
Unsurprisingly, the Trump administration has vehemently dismissed the anger around the emails while naming Virginia as the victims in the process. And so far, House Speaker Mike Johnson has taken extraordinary steps to prevent his members from forcing a vote to release them, even calling the House into recess earlier than expected in July.
But there is little that the Trump administration truly do in the coming days to stave off what will surely be a firestorm related to Epstein. That’s because almost every Democrat and a handful of rogue Republicans plan to use a process to force the vote a vote on the release of files related to the late pedophile.
Here’s a step-by-step rundown of how it will happen:
On Wednesday, the House will return after nearly two months to vote on legislation passed by the Senate to reopen the government after a 43-day long shutdown.
But before then, House Speaker Mike Johnson will swear in Adelita Grijalva, who won a special election in September to replace her late father former Rep. Raúl Grijalva more than a month ago.
Almost immediately, Grijalva will sign a discharge petition filed by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). A discharge petition allows for members to get around leadership and force a vote on legislation, but only if a majority of members have signed it.
So far, all 213 Democrats and three Republicans–Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Nancy Mace of South Carolina–have signed the discharge petition, giving them 217 signatures, one short of the requisite amount needed.
Grijalva has said she will sign the petition as soon as it is filed. Then comes the waiting game. First, seven legislative days must elapse before the petition can notify the House in a floor statement on a motion to discharge the petition to the floor.
Afterward, Johnson must designate a “time and place” on the legislative schedule within two legislative days.
There would then need to be a floor vote for the “rule,” which would set the parameters for debate. After debate, the House would hold a final floor vote.
Of course, there are many ways that Johnson can derail the final vote.
Earlier this year, he jammed an effort by archconservative Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) to put a discharge petition on the floor to allow for proxy voting for new parents. This came despite the fact Trump had said he was ok with allowing proxy voting.
And this is not even then end of the process. Afterward, the legislation would head to the Senate and there is no guarantee that Senate Majority Leader John Thune will hold a vote on the files.
For his part, has called the effort to release the files a “Democrat HOAX.” Massie and Khanna began their effort to releasew the files in July after the Department of Justice and the FBI put out a two-page memo saying that no “client list” of people who patronized young girls with Epstein existed and that Epstein died by suicide while in custody in 2019.
The memo triggered a firestorm for many on the right, including many of “manosphere” podcasters who previously backed Trump and who had hoped he would release the files.
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