With a single exception, the House of Representatives on Tuesday, Nov. 18, voted unanimously to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act and send it to the Senate. The act requires the Justice Department to make public all “unclassified records, documents, communications and investigative materials” related to the late convicted sex predator and accused sex trafficker within 30 days of the bill being signed into law. The Senate gave the American public whiplash when, just hours later, it too fired the bill off to the president’s desk by unanimous consent. Several GOP representatives expressed concern at some of the bill’s language, but it seems the public circus this whole affair has stirred up was too much for those who believe the legislation needed more work. The final vote in the House was 427-1. It is a historic and unprecedented move. These documents pertain to criminal investigations – something normally outside of its purview. That’s what troubles some Republicans. The lone “nay” vote belonged to Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), who explained in a post on X: “What was wrong with the bill three months ago is still wrong today. It abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America. As written, this bill reveals and injures thousands of innocent people – witnesses, people who provided alibis, family members, etc. If enacted in its current form, this type of broad reveal of criminal investigative files, released to a rabid media, will absolutely result in innocent people being hurt. [emphasis Higgins’]” A Dangerous Political Exercise House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and other GOPers expressed similar concerns about the lack of proper protections for some of Epstein’s victims and for many others whose names appear in the Epstein files and, thus, may be assumed to have been involved in the disgraced financier’s crimes even though they were not. There’s also the possible chilling effect the passage of this bill could have on future criminal investigations. Speaking to reporters on Nov. 18, Johnson said, “Who’s going to want to come forward if they think Congress can take a political exercise and reveal their identities? Who’s going to come talk to prosecutors? It’s very dangerous. It would deter future whistleblowers and informants.” The Speaker said he would insist to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) that language is inserted into the bill that will ensure the privacy of individuals who, for various reasons, are named in the Epstein files but are not implicated in any wrongdoing. These may include witnesses, victims, family members, whistleblowers, and even law enforcement personnel who may have been working undercover during the Epstein investigation. As Higgins further pointed out in his X post: “The Oversight Committee is conducting a thorough investigation that has already released well over 60,000 pages of documents from the Epstein case. That effort will continue in a manner that provides all due protections for innocent Americans.” Higgins added that he would vote for the bill when it returned to the House “[i]f the Senate amends the bill to properly address privacy of victims and other Americans, who are named but not criminally implicated.” He will not get the chance, though. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) asked for unanimous consent and got it without objection. Previously, he had said in a statement, “Republicans have spent months trying to protect Donald Trump and hide what’s in the files. Americans are tired of waiting and are demanding to see the truth. If Leader Thune tries to bury the bill, I’ll stop him.” This has been the line from Democrats for months, even though the name Epstein barely crossed their lips for the four years during which the Biden administration sat on the Epstein files, making no move to release anything. For his part, Thune had reportedly indicated that, because the House so overwhelmingly approved the bill, the Senate is unlikely to alter it to any extent, and the upper chamber is likely to move swiftly. Unanimous consent means no debate, obviously, no changes to the bill, and therefore no need to return it to the House. The Epstein Files and Trump As so many have pointed out – including The Washington Post, a newspaper well-known for its heavy anti-Trump leanings – if the Epstein files implicated Trump in anything that appeared remotely illegal, immoral, or underhanded, that information would have been leaked to the media years ago. Undoubtedly, Trump’s political opponents would have ensured any such revelations were so widely known that almost certainly America’s 47th president would not have been named Trump. After blowing hot and cold on the issue, the president finally signaled his approval of the Epstein bill and asserted that he would sign it even without the kinds of additional protections many Republicans called for. He may believe that this will finally put the whole affair in the rearview mirror. He would be wrong about that. The Epstein files saga is not nearing its end. In fact, this is not even the beginning of the end – it may just be the end of the beginning. What follows, after the president signs the bill and the DOJ reluctantly complies, will be a months-long media feeding frenzy and probably a few lawsuits. Elected Democrats, after they have pored over every word in the documents and come up with nothing they can pin on Trump, will inevitably proclaim that the documents containing the damning evidence have been classified and redacted. Trump’s enemies could be about to fall into a trap of their own making – focusing so much on flogging this particular deceased Equus ferus caballus that even their most ardent anti-Trump cheerleaders get tired of it. But perhaps they believe this is their new secret midterm elections weapon. Spoiler alert: It almost certainly is not.
https://www.libertynation.com/congress-moves-quickly-to-bring-epstein-files-closer-to-sunlight/