{"id":11616,"date":"2025-07-23T20:32:46","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T20:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/thune-johnson-will-have-to-deal-with-epstein-mess\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T20:32:46","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T20:32:46","slug":"thune-johnson-will-have-to-deal-with-epstein-mess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/thune-johnson-will-have-to-deal-with-epstein-mess\/","title":{"rendered":"Thune: Johnson will have to \u2018deal\u2019 with Epstein mess"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday that Speaker Mike Johnson has to figure out a way forward on the Jeffrey Epstein controversy that&#8217;s derailed House business until the fall.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn some fashion, in some way, he&#8217;s going to have to handle it and deal with it,\u201d Thune said during an interview from his Senate office. \u201cAnd it sounds like, yeah, that&#8217;ll be a September [issue].\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Johnson chose to wrap up House votes early this week and send members home for the summer because of growing dysfunction fueled by the bipartisan push for more disclosure around Epstein, the deceased financier and former sex offender with ties to Trump and other prominent figures.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe&#8217;s kind of handling it how I believe he thinks he needs to,\u201d Thune said of Johnson. \u201cHe has a constituency out there that feels, in his caucus at least, that feels very strongly about it, and can make it difficult to get anything else done.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thune said the Epstein conflict isn\u2019t yet bubbling up in his chamber.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI&#8217;m not hearing the hue and cry, I guess I would say, to do a deep dive into this \u2013 to hold hearings or anything like that,\u201d he said. \u201cAt least not at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thune said he and Trump have discussed Epstein \u201cin passing.\u201d Thune said Trump has conveyed that \u201cthere are other priorities that should take precedence.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe hasn&#8217;t made any specific point with me in conversations other than to reference what&#8217;s going on, what the House is saying,\u201d Thune said. \u201cI think he has an opinion, which he\u2019s stated, that he&#8217;s shared with me, but he hasn&#8217;t given us any direction or suggestion or anything like that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday that Speaker Mike Johnson has to figure out a way forward on the Jeffrey Epstein controversy that&#8217;s derailed House business until the fall. \u201cIn some fashion, in some way, he&#8217;s going to have to handle it and deal with it,\u201d Thune said during an interview from his Senate [&hellip;]<\/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-11616","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\/11616","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=11616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}