{"id":11611,"date":"2025-07-23T17:01:40","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T17:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/johnson-defends-house-gop-epstein-strategy-amid-legislative-chaos\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T17:01:40","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T17:01:40","slug":"johnson-defends-house-gop-epstein-strategy-amid-legislative-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/johnson-defends-house-gop-epstein-strategy-amid-legislative-chaos\/","title":{"rendered":"Johnson defends House GOP Epstein strategy amid legislative chaos"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Speaker Mike Johnson is on the defensive as he prepares to let the House leave early for August recess rather than allow his conference be hammered further by agitation on both sides of the aisle over votes to release the Jeffrey Epstein files.<\/p>\n

The Louisiana Republican Wednesday afternoon insisted, “no one in Congress is blocking Epstein documents.” He also defended his decision to shut down the Rules Committee this week and cancel consideration of key legislative agenda items after Republicans on the panel rebelled over being forced to take more Epstein votes. <\/p>\n

\u201cRepublicans are preventing Democrats from making a mockery of the Rules Committee process because we refuse to engage in their political charade,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cThat is what is happening, and nothing more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson reiterated that Republicans need to \u201clet the process play out,\u201d and if more information doesn\u2019t come out over August recess then Congress \u201cwill act\u201d when lawmakers return. He added there was \u201cno point in having a vote today\u201d on Republicans\u2019 non-binding Epstein resolution expressing support for the documents\u2019 release \u2014 or any other Epstein-related bill, for that matter \u2014 because the Trump administration is working on unsealing grand jury information. <\/p>\n

But he also cast doubt that a bipartisan bill from Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), that would compel the files to be unsealed, would ever see a full House vote, saying it had \u201cproblems.\u201d GOP leaders believe they can kill Massie and Khanna\u2019s push for a vote on this legislation if more information comes out over recess.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Johnson appeared to cast doubt on his own party’s movement toward subpoenaing Ghislaine Maxwell, an Epstein co-conspirator, to testify.<\/p>\n

Johnson said if Republicans want to go ahead and subpoena Maxwell, as they\u2019re planning to do, then \u201cthat\u2019s fine.\u201d But he quickly referenced past Justice Department allegations that she is a pervasive liar<\/a>, adding \u201ccan she be counted on to tell the truth\u2026can we trust what she\u2019s going to say?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaker Mike Johnson is on the defensive as he prepares to let the House leave early for August recess rather than allow his conference be hammered further by agitation on both sides of the aisle over votes to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. The Louisiana Republican Wednesday afternoon insisted, “no one in Congress is blocking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11611\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}