House Member Discusses Epstein Files Act

I'm here today-

The, the Chair-

Go ahead.

The Chair has been made aware of the valid basis for the gentleman's point of

personal privilege. The gentleman from Kentucky

is recognized for one hour.

Roughly three weeks ago, the Speaker of the House said,

"Let me tell you how stupid Thomas Massie's comment is."

An article said that Johnson says Republicans are here to work and will

remain in Washington throughout September according to the House calendar.

He goes on to say, "That is a nonsensical statement by

someone who is not participating as a full member

of the Congress, and it's really sad that he

doesn't,"

unquote.

Well, I'm here today to let you know that I'm

a full participating member of the House of Representatives.

In fact,

when other people wanna go home,

I'm here to work. I'm here to get justice for the Epstein

victims,

the survivors.

I am here

to get the price of food and fuel down

for our constituents. We've got solutions.

We just refuse to pass them. So what happened a couple

weeks ago is I introduced the Epstein Files

Transparency Act II discharge petition,

and I predicted that the House would

take days off the calendar in order to avoid a vote

on this again.

If you remember a year ago, we had the Epstein

recess, I call it.

My colleague Ro Khanna and I have been very successful in

collecting names.

We were just two signatures short of 218 on a discharge

petition,

and the leadership of this body recessed this body for weeks

to avoid swearing in one member that would've been the

218th vote.

I was here. I was ready to work, to be a fully

participating member of Congress.

Well,

the Speaker saw otherwise, the leadership here saw otherwise, and

they kept Congress shut down for weeks. We came back.

I got that 218th signature,

and the bill that Ro Khanna and I co-authored

became law. Every member except for one member of

this House voted for our legislation that they had

criticized for months.

If it was so bad, why did they all vote for it?

That bill went to the Senate.

It passed by unanimous consent. If you ask the senators, "Can you pass

one of our House bills?" What will they say?

"Well, we'll see if we can get it on the docket.

That's gonna take at least three days. We gotta get a 60-vote threshold.

We, um, to get overcome the filibuster, and

so, uh, it's gonna be a while." How long did it

take them to pass the Epstein

Files Transparency Act?

They passed it before it got there.

It left this House, and on the walk between the House and the

Senate, they made a unanimous consent to pass

that bill as soon as

it got there, and nobody objected.

The president himself signed that bill.

He had earlier said it would be a hostile act to even support that

bill.

And what came of it?

Three million files released. Now, we've yet to see

justice here in the United States,

but we watched a, a British ambassador to the United States

lose his job. He was sacked.

We saw the prince,

the Prince of England, lose his title.

We saw the former prime minister of Norway

arrested, convicted.

Maybe not convicted yet, but arrested.

We saw the minister of culture in France

receive the same fate. CEOs, presidents of

universities resigned.

Over a hoax? Somebody shoulda told them it was a hoax

because that's what we were told, that it was a hoax.

Folks, it wasn't a hoax, and there's still three million of those

files

that are being withheld at the Department of Justice, and the ones

that have been released have been overly redacted in contravention of that

law.

So am I a fully p- What would a fully participating member of

Congress do

if he got a law enacted against the will of the president, against the

will of the Speaker, against the will, against all odds, and then

the chief law enforcement officer of the country will not follow the law?

What would a fully participating member of Congress do?

Well, I think he'd do what I did.

I wrote w- along with Ro Khanna and Teresa Leger Fernandez.

By the way, when did it become a dirty word to work

across

the aisle? When did that become forbidden?

I thought that was supposed to be a good thing, to form coalitions.

"Oh, Massie, he, you know, he can't get anything done.

He can't get people to agree with him."

It was 427 to one was the vote on the Epstein

files. Come on.

Uh, I think that's a pretty big coalition.

But it was more than just getting the files released.

My colleague Ro Khanna and I held the biggest press conference

that's ever occurred

in Washington, DC, in at least a decade, for as long as I've been

here.

Is that something a not fully participating member of Congress would do?

I don't think so.

Why did we do it? To give a voice to the survivors.

We gave them a venue to speak to you, the people in power,

the people who were hiding the files at the DOJ, at the

FBI, at the US Attorneys. For the first time

ever, we gave them a voice. We gave them a platform,

and they were brave. They stepped up.

They told their very tragic and sad stories,

and they compelled the rest of this body

to do the right thing after resisting for so long.

So that gets us to where we are now on the Epstein files.