On Wednesday, Massie and Khanna began collecting signatures on a discharge petition that would force a vote on whether to demand that the Administration release all of the Epstein files.
The petition is a rarely used procedure that can allow rank-and-file lawmakers to put legislation on the floor, without the support of the leadership, if 218 House members sign on.
The duo’s effort is facing stiffening headwinds. Michael Gold of the New York Times reported that their momentum appears to be stalling in the face of a multipronged effort by Republican leaders — including a warning from the White House that support for their measure would be viewed as a “very hostile act to the Administration”.
Yet just the fact that the White House and Republican leaders have needed to work so hard to stop a quixotic effort by two political opposites speaks to the hold the Epstein matter still has over the President’s base — and the unexpected potency of the topsy-turvy political alliances that are forming in Trump’s Washington.
Khanna said: “Do you really want a situation where we’re at 216 or 217 signatures, and every single Republican member of Congress who’s not on that petition is going to be asked back home, ‘Why don’t you sign the petition to get the release of the files?’”
The release of the Epstein files once drew broad support from Republicans, including US President Donald Trump, who seemed to endorse the idea during his 2024 campaign.
After he took office, though, Attorney-General Pam Bondi suggested the Administration would release major revelations from the files, before backpedalling.
“I think the Administration did a 180 on this because they discovered not that Trump would be implicated, but some of their biggest donors and friends would be implicated and/or embarrassed,” Massie said.
I spoke with both men, when Massie, a renegade Republican who has repeatedly drawn the President’s ire by voting against his priorities, was in Khanna’s office.
At the time, the pair knew they had the support of three Republican representatives — Greene, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, and Lauren Boebert of Colorado — but they also said the White House was working to peel away the support of other Republicans (11 originally signed on as co-sponsors of Massie’s measure).
“I told the White House liaison — who’s working against me — I said, ‘I may have made a tactical error here by actually getting co-sponsors on my bill, because now you know which 12 to target,’ and he kind of smiled,” Massie said.
He insisted that he hadn’t lobbied hard to get the Republican signatures on the discharge petition that he had collected so far — and hadn’t even been aware that Mace was going to sign on until she did.
The two decided to team up on the measure earlier this northern summer.
They had already co-sponsored a resolution to block America’s involvement in the June conflict between Iran and Israel when Massie noticed that Khanna had forced an Epstein-related vote on the rules committee that drew the support of one Republican, Ralph Norman of South Carolina.
“He said, ‘You know, I’ve got a better idea,’” Khanna said. “‘Why don’t we team up, and we’ll do this as a resolution and a discharge petition?’”
At yesterday’s news conference, which was largely organised by Khanna, women who said they had been victims of Epstein spoke of the closure they would get from a broader release of documents and said they would compile a list of Epstein’s associates themselves.
“Accountability is what makes a society civilised,” said Anouska De Georgiou, who said she had been abused by Epstein.
She added: “President Trump, you have so much influence and power in this situation. Please use that influence and power to help us.”
The odd politics of the moment were on display, too, as Massie urged fellow Republicans to “find their spines”, while Khanna praised Greene for being there and urged people to stop calling her names.
Republican leaders are hoping mightily that they have done enough to stop Massie and Khanna’s momentum.
On Wednesday, the House Oversight Committee released 33,000 pages of Epstein files — although much of that material was not new — and Republican leaders met with some Epstein victims who had travelled to Washington for yesterday’s news conference.
Earlier, Republicans supported a largely symbolic measure that instructed a House committee to continue an inquiry into the matter that Democrats had forced it to start earlier this summer.
“This is a Democrat hoax that never ends,” Trump said yesterday.
Massie and Khanna believe that any political cover provided by Republicans’ moves this week will be fleeting. The issue’s hold on the base, they say, is just too strong.
“Too many people are following this too closely, and when the American people tune into something, it’s very hard to pull the wool over their eyes,” Khanna said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Jess Bidgood
Photograph by: Eric Lee
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
