Johnson says House will vote next week on push to compel DOJ to release all of its Epstein files

By Sarah Ferris, Manu Raju, Ellis Kim, CNN

(CNN) — Speaker Mike Johnson announced Wednesday that he would put a contentious bill compelling the release of all of the Justice Department’s Jeffrey Epstein case files to a vote on the House floor next week – earlier than expected.

“We’re going to put that on the floor for a full vote when we get back next week,” Johnson said, adding, “in the meantime I’ll remind everybody the [House] Oversight Committee has been working around the clock” on its own investigation.

Johnson was required to soon put the bill from Reps. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, and Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, on the floor after the pair successfully deployed an arcane tool in the chamber known as a discharge petition. But he had some leeway to do so.

The Republican leaders’ suggestion that he would move more quickly than expected to put the bill before the full House is a reflection of the growing sense of agitation among members of his party on Capitol Hill. The House GOP – which is fiercely loyal to Trump – is not eager to take the vote, which goes against the president’s own wishes. But many members of the party are also sick of the months of growing pressure from some vocal members of their own party, including Massie and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and feel they need to vote in favor of releasing the files or risk being accused of protecting pedophiles.

“Just get it to the daggum floor and let the people decide,” a frustrated Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, told reporters after he went rogue earlier in the day, taking to the House floor to try to force an expedited vote on the bill.

“I’m tired of messing around. The Democrats have had the Epstein files for four years, and now we’ve got it for nine months, and it’s going to be dragged into a bunch of nonsense. Let’s just take it to the floor. Let’s vote on it. Let’s get on with it,” he said.

The congressman’s push was denied because it did not follow the proper parliamentary procedure.

Political pressure over that high-profile Epstein vote roared back to life on the Hill Wednesday, with House members return to Washington after more than a month away.

Democratic Rep. Adelita Grijalva’s afternoon swearing in as the House’s newest member delivered the decisive vote to the discharge petition to force a vote, despite GOP leadership’s opposition and an apparent eleventh-hour pressure campaign by the White House to avoid it altogether.

As speaker of the House, Johnson can bring any bill up on the floor at any time, regardless of what the rules require. But Massie and Khanna used the discharge petition because House GOP leadership did not want the bill to get a vote – leaving many expecting they would have to wait seven legislative days to circumvent leadership and come to the floor.

While the floor schedule for next week has not yet been set, Johnson said leadership wants to bring up the measure “as soon as possible.”

“It’s a totally pointless exercise. It’s completely moot now. We might as well just do it. I mean, they have 218 signatures, that’s fine, we’ll do it,” he said.

The House Committee on Oversight Committee on Wednesday released an additional 20,000 pages of documents the GOP-led panel had received from the late convicted sex offender’s estate.

In emails released as part of the tranche, Epstein, whose death by suicide has spawned intense scrutiny of the high-profile people he knew, mentioned Donald Trump by name multiple times in private correspondence over the last 15 years with an associate and an author in Trump’s orbit – details seized on by Democrats.

Johnson, however, brushed aside the newly public details when asked about them earlier in the day.

“I think it’s a massive distraction by the Democrats while we’re trying to get the government reopened and cover for their mistakes. I find it interesting that the press corps didn’t ask all these questions for four years during the Biden administration,” Johnson said, when asked whether he had any concerns about the new findings.

Pressed by CNN why Congress shouldn’t release all Epstein documents when the president himself has said he supports doing so, Johnson said: “He is for maximum transparency. He said it as recently as a couple of days ago, and I talked to him about it today. He’s for everything coming out.”

As the Epstein-related pressure builds, two more House Republicans — GOP Reps. Warren Davidson of Ohio and Eli Crane of Arizona — said they plan to vote for the bill to release the files when it comes to the floor. Neither had signed the discharge petition.

Other Republicans, however, remain staunchly opposed.

“I’m a vote against,” Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana told CNN.

“My understanding and I’ve looked into it extensively is that the president didn’t like that guy, he had no friendly relationships with him. You can’t control who takes a picture with you,” he said.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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CNN’s Annie Grayer and Morgan Rimmer contributed to this report.