{"id":14214,"date":"2025-10-08T17:31:52","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T17:31:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/speaker-clashes-with-dem-senators-over-epstein-files-amid-shutdown\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T17:31:52","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T17:31:52","slug":"speaker-clashes-with-dem-senators-over-epstein-files-amid-shutdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/speaker-clashes-with-dem-senators-over-epstein-files-amid-shutdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Speaker clashes with Dem senators over Epstein files amid shutdown"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday had a heated, face-to-face exchange with two Democratic senators Wednesday over the government shutdown and the swearing-in of Arizona&#8217;s Democratic Rep-elect Adelita Grijalva, who will be the 218th signature on an effort to end-run Johnson and force a vote on releasing Jeffrey Epstein-related documents.<\/p>\n<p>Arizona Sens. Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly were talking to reporters outside Johnson&#8217;s office about what they said was the speaker&#8217;s failure to swear-in Grijalva. House GOP leadership has said they will swear in Grijalva when the House returns for votes. <\/p>\n<p>But Gallego accused Johnson of wanting to \u201ccover up for pedophiles on the Epstein list, and number two, put his members in a really rough position when it comes to voting and extending these ACA tax credits.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Johnson came out of his office at one point to argue he hasn&#8217;t scheduled Grijalva&#8217;s swearing in because she was elected after the House was out of session, unlike some previous examples. The speaker also made clear he wouldn&#8217;t bring the House back, and therefore swear in Grijalva, until Senate Democrats vote to reopen the government and pass the clean, short-term stopgap through Nov. 21.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So I am anxious to administer the oath to her, as soon as you guys vote to open up the government,&#8221; Johnson said to Kelly and Gallego at one point.<\/p>\n<p>Kelly and Gallego argued to Johnson that he swore in two Florida Republicans during a previous pro forma session.<\/p>\n<p>But Gallego shot back: &#8220;You don&#8217;t want to be on the Epstein discharge.&#8221; Johnson quickly responded: &#8220;That&#8217;s totally absurd. You guys are experts in red herrings&#8230;It has nothing to do with Epstein.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday had a heated, face-to-face exchange with two Democratic senators Wednesday over the government shutdown and the swearing-in of Arizona&#8217;s Democratic Rep-elect Adelita Grijalva, who will be the 218th signature on an effort to end-run Johnson and force a vote on releasing Jeffrey Epstein-related documents. Arizona Sens. Ruben Gallego and Mark [&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-14214","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\/14214","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=14214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}