WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senate Republican leaders, including Wyoming’s John Barrasso, allowed legislation on the Epstein files to pass Wednesday with no debate or amendments, ignoring U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson’s insistence on changes.
Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, made his pleas on the House floor just ahead of that chamber’s 427-1 vote on Tuesday. He said the bill was written "haphazardly."
After House passage, Reuters reports that aides to President Donald Trump then pushed senators behind the scenes to make changes.
The Reuters report said those aides were “quietly lobbying senators to slow-walk a vote.”
Instead, just hours after the House vote, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York sought unanimous consent for the Senate to pass the House’s bill unchanged — and no Republicans objected.
Wednesday morning, the Senate’s presiding chairman deemed the bill passed.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Trump was expected to sign the bill.
The bill would require him to release of files in the Justice Department’s possession on Jeffrey Epstein, the now-deceased financier who sex-trafficked minors.
“This all happened very quickly yesterday afternoon,” Barrasso spokeswoman Laura Mengelkamp told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday.
She declined to elaborate on why Barrasso, the Senate’s second-ranking Republican, let the bill go straight to Trump’s desk in spite of the demands by Johnson and — according to Reuters — Trump’s aides behind closed doors.
Joe Jackson, a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyoming, said Wednesday that Lummis supports the release of the Epstein files and therefore has no problem with Schumer’s move.
Floor Vote Forced
Trump and Johnson had long tried to halt the House vote on the Epstein files bill.
But a majority of House lawmakers — all Democrats plus four Republicans — signed a petition to discharge it out of committee, forcing it to the floor.
Before the floor vote, Trump and Johnson lost their bid to get some of the four Republican signatories to take their names off the petition, which would have caused the bill to die in committee.
When it was clear their efforts failed and the floor vote would take place, Trump said he supports the bill.
Democrats have noted that Trump has always had the power to release the files without a law making him do that.
Interviewed Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Barrasso did not indicate that passage of the bill in either chamber was imminent.
“We’ll see if they send something to the Senate, and if they do, we’ll take a look at that if it passes the House and we’ll see what it says,” Barrasso said on the program.
But on Sunday night, Trump reversed course and gave his blessing for Republicans to vote for the bill.
“It’s a shame that so many Republicans, Donald Trump and Republican leaders in Congress, tried for months to prevent the truth from coming out,” Schumer said in his Wednesday floor remarks. “Republican leaders had to be dragged kicking and screaming to get this bill over the finish line.
“Left to their own devices, these Republican leaders would have never let the bill see the light of day. But that shows you how powerful the issue is.”
Schumer raised questions about whether the president will fully comply with the law or instead release only certain files from the Justice Department’s trove.
“There must be no funny business from Donald Trump,” Schumer said.
'Loser, Traitor'
Along with all House Democrats, U.S. Republican Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Lauren Boebert of Colorado signed the discharge petition to force the floor vote.
Trump has had harsh words recently for some of those Republicans in online posts, calling Massie a “loser” and changing “Taylor” to “Traitor” in Greene’s name.
The petition needed 218 signatures, representing just over half of the 435 seats in the House. For months, it lingered with 217 names.
What changed was the swearing-in Nov. 12 of U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat who won a special election. Her signature was the 218th.
Sean Barry can be reached at sean@cowboystatedaily.com.
