US House calls early summer recess amid turmoil over Epstein files
The chamber was scheduled be in session through Thursday ahead of the annual five-week summer recess, but on Tuesday, the Republican majority announced that the last votes of the week would take place the following day. Democrats in turn accused the GOP of leaving town rather than dealing with the outcry over Donald Trump's handling of the investigation into the alleged sex trafficker.
'They are actually ending this week early because they're afraid to cast votes on the Jeffrey Epstein issue,' said Ted Lieu, the vice-chair of the House Democratic caucus.
Republicans downplayed the decision to cut short the workweek, while arguing that the White House has already moved to resolve questions about the case. Last week, Trump asked the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to release grand jury testimony, although that is expected to be only a fraction of the case's documents.
'We're going to have committee meetings through Thursday, and there's still a lot of work being done,' said the majority leader, Steve Scalise. 'The heavy work is done in committee and there is a lot of work being done this week before we head out.' He declined to answer a question about whether votes were cut short over the Epstein files.
At a press conference, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, insisted that Congress must be careful in calling for the release of documents related to the case, for fear of retraumatizing his victims.
'There's no purpose for Congress to push an administration to do something that they're already doing. And so this is for political games,' he said. 'I'm very resolute on this, we can both call for full transparency and also protect victims, and if you run roughshod, or you do it too quickly, that's not what happens.'
Questions surrounding Epstein's 2019 death and his involvement in running a sex-trafficking ring that allegedly procured underage girls for global elites flared up earlier this month after the justice department announced its determination that he committed suicide in a federal prison, and he had no client list that could be released.
The disclosure, along with the department's statement that it would release no further information about the case, sparked an uproar among many supporters of the president, who believed he would get to the bottom of a supposed 'deep state' plot to cover up Epstein's ties to global elites. Some of Trump's own officials had promoted such expectations, including Bondi, who in February told Fox News that Epstein's client list was 'sitting on my desk right now to review'.
Congressional Democrats have sought to capitalize on the rare split between the president and his supporters, with an eye towards retaking the majority in the House next year. The venue for those efforts has been the rules committee, the normally low-key body that all legislation must pass through before it is considered by the full House.
Democrats on the committee last week repeatedly offered amendments to unrelated legislation that were designed to compel the release of the Epstein files, forcing Republicans to vote them down – a politically difficult vote for many in the party, as it could potentially be used to accused them of wanting to keep the files secret.
Frustration among the GOP peaked on Monday, when Democrats planned to use a rules committee hearing to offer more Epstein amendments, and the GOP reacted by refusing to vote on any more rules, essentially paralyzing the House floor. Johnson has attempted to stem the controversy by agreeing to allow a vote on a non-binding resolution on the file's release, but that won't happen before the August recess.
On Tuesday, a House oversight subcommittee approved a subpoena proposed by Republican congressman Tim Burchett for the testimony of Ghislaine Maxwell, a close associate of Epstein who is serving a 20-year prison sentence related to the sex trafficking case. The justice department is also seeking to speak with her, and it is unclear when she might appear before Congress.
Meanwhile, Thomas Massie, a libertarian-leaning Republican who has repeatedly broken with his party, and Democratic congressman Ro Khanna have collaborated on a legislative maneuver that will force a vote on releasing the Epstein files, though that is not expected to take place until after the House returns from its recess, in the first week of September.
Joe Morelle, the number-two Democrat on the House appropriations committee, warned that cutting short the workweek costs time that lawmakers could use to consider spending legislation that must be passed by the end of September to prevent a government shutdown.
'We haven't done appropriation bills, and yet we're going to take extra days off simply because we don't want to go through the discomfort of pushing the president to do what he's promised to do, what the attorney general has promised to do, what the FBI director has promised to do, that they're now violating their pledge and their commitment to do,' Morelle said.
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