{"id":12913,"date":"2025-09-04T15:04:59","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T15:04:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/jeffrey-epstein-discharge-petition-will-fail-mike-johnson-predicts\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T15:04:59","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T15:04:59","slug":"jeffrey-epstein-discharge-petition-will-fail-mike-johnson-predicts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/jeffrey-epstein-discharge-petition-will-fail-mike-johnson-predicts\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeffrey Epstein discharge petition will fail, Mike Johnson predicts"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday he doesn\u2019t believe a bipartisan effort to force a House vote compelling the release of Jeffrey Epstein-related documents will succeed.<\/p>\n<p>Asked about the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/live-updates\/2025\/09\/02\/congress\/epstein-discharge-petition-filed-00540016\" target=\"_blank\">discharge petition<\/a> led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Johnson said he doubted they would convince enough Republicans to sign on.<\/p>\n<p>Massie and three other GOP members have so far signed; at least two more House Republicans would be needed in order to end-run Johnson and force a vote on requiring the Justice Department to release its entire file on the disgraced sex trafficker.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don&#8217;t expect he will,\u201d Johnson said when asked about Massie\u2019s chances of success.<\/p>\n<p>White House officials are running an intense pressure campaign to keep Republicans from joining the discharge effort. Trump aides have made calls to GOP members who have co-sponsored the Massie-Khanna measure, pressuring those who haven&#8217;t signed to keep their names off the discharge petition and those who have to remove their names, according to three Republicans granted anonymity to discuss the conversations.<\/p>\n<p>Johnson said in a separate interview Thursday that Massie\u2019s effort is \u201csuperfluous\u201d after Republicans approved a leadership-blessed measure encouraging the House Oversight Committee to continue its pending Epstein probe.<\/p>\n<p>That vote is symbolic in nature and was put forward by GOP leaders as a way to head off Massie\u2019s binding effort.<\/p>\n<p>Johnson also said he suspected President Donald Trump will \u201cprobably\u201d meet with Epstein&#8217;s victims, some of whom came to Capitol Hill Wednesday to appear with Massie and Khanna.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday he doesn\u2019t believe a bipartisan effort to force a House vote compelling the release of Jeffrey Epstein-related documents will succeed. Asked about the discharge petition led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Johnson said he doubted they would convince enough Republicans to sign on. Massie and three [&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-12913","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\/12913","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=12913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}