{"id":15825,"date":"2025-11-19T02:31:45","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T02:31:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/thune-denies-johnsons-demand-for-epstein-bill-changes\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T02:31:45","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T02:31:45","slug":"thune-denies-johnsons-demand-for-epstein-bill-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/thune-denies-johnsons-demand-for-epstein-bill-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"Thune denies Johnson\u2019s demand for Epstein bill changes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Speaker Mike Johnson said he voted for the Jeffrey Epstein disclosure bill Tuesday based on his hope that the Senate would make changes he\u2019s been demanding. Senate Majority Leader John Thune shot that down.<\/p>\n

Thune said Tuesday evening that, while he had talked with the speaker about the bill, he and Senate GOP legal counsel decided the legislation was \u201csufficient.\u201d The Senate effectively approved the legislation<\/a> by unanimous consent mere hours after House passage Tuesday afternoon without provisions sought by Johnson, including additional victim and whistleblower name protections.<\/p>\n

“I talked with the speaker a bit, and we’ve been in consultation obviously with the White House on this for some time,\u201d Thune told reporters. \u201cThe conclusion was when it came out of the House 427-1 that, you know, it was going to pass in the Senate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thune\u2019s refusal to amend the bill was just the latest setback Johnson has faced in the Epstein saga, where the Louisiana Republican saw a rank-and-file member of his own party, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), pull off a stunning legislative end-run despite the speaker\u2019s months-long opposition campaign.<\/p>\n

Johnson said after House passage Tuesday that he would \u201cinsist upon\u201d changes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI talked to John Thune over the weekend. I just texted him. We\u2019re going to get together. We\u2019ll talk about this,\u201d Johnson told reporters as he left the floor. \u201cThere\u2019s an easy way to amend the legislation to make sure that we don\u2019t do permanent damage to the justice system. And I\u2019m going to insist upon that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if he would press Trump to veto the bill if the Senate didn\u2019t amend it, Johnson said he would \u201ccross that bridge\u201d if necessary. He also raised \u201cnational security\u201d concerns about the bill Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Thune said Senate Republican lawyers examined the legislation and determined it could go forward without being amended.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur lawyers obviously had looked closely at some of the issues and had concluded that the bill I think was, you know, sufficient to accomplish what needed to be done here, and that is to get the information out there as quickly as possible,\u201d Thune said.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Johnson told reporters he had received \u201csome comfort\u201d from the Senate that the chamber would make the changes. But Thune never publicly indicated he expected the Senate to revise the bill and even warned earlier Tuesday<\/a> that changes were unlikely.<\/p>\n

The only short-lived whiff of resistance that appeared in the Senate Tuesday came from Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), who appeared to raise concerns at the last minute but did not block the effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were trying to see if we needed to change language to protect the victims,\u201d Mullin said to reporters.<\/p>\n

Shortly before Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer sought unanimous consent to greenlight the bill, Mullin said that there had been a \u201cconversation\u201d with the administration about what the Oklahoma Republican characterized as \u201ctechnical changes,\u201d which ultimately didn’t get made.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaker Mike Johnson said he voted for the Jeffrey Epstein disclosure bill Tuesday based on his hope that the Senate would make changes he\u2019s been demanding. Senate Majority Leader John Thune shot that down. Thune said Tuesday evening that, while he had talked with the speaker about the bill, he and Senate GOP legal counsel […]<\/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-15825","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\/15825","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=15825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15825\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}