Epstein files fight intensifies as discharge petition nears 218 and judge sets contempt deadline

A House discharge petition aimed at forcing a vote on a second Epstein files transparency bill sat two signatures short of the threshold needed to succeed this week, even as a federal judge in Washington gave the Justice Department until Thursday to show why it should not be held in contempt over its handling of the same records. The two tracks, one legislative and one judicial, have converged on a single question that has vexed Congress for nearly a year: whether the Trump administration is complying with a law it signed with near-unanimous support.

Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said last week they have commitments for all 218 signatures needed to bypass House Republican leadership and force a floor vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act II, a follow-on bill that would let state attorneys general, district attorneys and Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's victims sue the attorney general directly over withheld or redacted records. As of the discharge petition's last public count, it had 216 signatures, according to reporting published Monday. Four Republicans — Massie, Ralph Norman and Nancy Mace of South Carolina, and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania — have joined every House Democrat in signing on, an unusual bipartisan bloc that overcame Speaker Mike Johnson's refusal to schedule a vote through ordinary channels.

The numbers

The dispute turns on figures both sides contest. The Department of Justice said in January it had published nearly 3.5 million pages, more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images in what it called compliance with the original Epstein Files Transparency Act, while withholding roughly 200,000 pages under claims of deliberative-process and attorney-client privilege, duplicate records, and material unrelated to the Epstein and Maxwell cases. Massie disputes that accounting. "The Department of Justice continues to unlawfully withhold over 3 million Epstein files that should be released to the public," he said in the statement introducing the new bill, adding that DOJ "is unlawfully maintaining heavy redactions on the files it is releasing." Khanna, in the same release, said the department "violated our law, delayed the release of millions of files, botched the redactions, and denied the survivors justice."

How we got here

Congress passed the original Epstein Files Transparency Act by a House vote of 427 to 1 and Senate unanimous consent, and President Trump signed it into law on November 19, 2025, after months of resistance from his own party leadership, who had blocked an earlier vote until a discharge petition forced their hand. The law directed the attorney general to release, within 30 days and with narrow exceptions, essentially all unclassified Justice Department files tied to the Epstein and Maxwell investigations.

Separately, the broadcaster and attorney Katie Phang sued Attorney General Todd Blanche in April, arguing the department was missing statutory deadlines, redacting material without explanation and declining to review Epstein-related documents written in foreign languages. In the case, Phang v. Blanche, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan granted a preliminary injunction in June finding Phang likely to succeed on her claim that DOJ's conduct violated the Administrative Procedure Act; the department has since appealed to the D.C. Circuit. On September 17, Sullivan went further, writing in a 20-page order that Blanche's office had failed to justify withholding four sets of handwritten FBI interview notes it argued were merely "substantially similar" to typed reports already released. The judge wrote that the department "cites no authority for the proposition that administrative inconvenience excuses him from meeting his statutory obligations," and ordered DOJ to either produce the disputed records or explain by September 24 why the court's prior orders were not "clear and unambiguous." A civil contempt finding, Sullivan wrote, would be premature for now but could follow if compliance does not improve.

A companion bill in the Senate, introduced by Sens. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico alongside Reps. Massie, Khanna and Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico, mirrors the House measure and would need to clear the upper chamber separately even if the discharge petition succeeds. Neither Merkley nor Luján has announced a parallel procedural push to force floor action in the Senate, where discharge petitions do not exist in the same form and leadership retains tighter control over the calendar.

Who is affected

The bill's most direct beneficiaries would be the dozens of women who have come forward as victims of Epstein and Maxwell, who under the resolution's text would gain a standing right to sue for unredacted records about themselves and to compel state or local prosecutors' access to material relevant to separate investigations. The measure would also expose DOJ and FBI officials to criminal penalties for concealing or falsifying records, and would bar the department from invoking legal privileges to justify withholding files — the same privileges DOJ cited in January to explain roughly 200,000 withheld pages.

The fight also has a more immediate political dimension. House Oversight Committee ranking member Rep. Robert Garcia said in February, after reviewing evidence logs at DOJ, that the department appears to have withheld dozens of pages of FBI interview notes tied to a woman who, according to Garcia, told investigators in 2019 that Trump assaulted her when she was a minor in the 1980s. An index of interview materials suggested FBI agents met with the woman multiple times, but only one report of those meetings had surfaced in the department's public archive. The department disputed the framing, saying nothing had been deleted and that any temporarily pulled files were tied to routine victim-identity redactions before being restored. Trump has said the released files have "totally exonerated" him and has denied the underlying allegations.

"Since the Epstein Files Transparency Act was signed into law on November 19, 2025, the Department of Justice has flagrantly and consistently ignored EFTA's disclosure requirements," Rep. Thomas Massie said in the statement announcing the follow-on bill.

What happens next

The House remains in its pre-election recess and is not expected to return to Washington until after the November midterms, meaning the two Democrats needed to complete the discharge petition — identified in earlier reporting as Reps. John Garamendi and Adam Smith, both sidelined by illness when the chamber adjourned — are expected to add their names once members reconvene. Under House rules, once a discharge petition reaches 218 signatures, the speaker must schedule a floor vote within seven legislative days, a mechanism that would let Massie and Khanna force a vote over Johnson's objection just as they did with the original transparency act last year.

On the judicial track, the more pressing date is Thursday, when the Justice Department's response to Judge Sullivan's order comes due. If the department again fails to satisfy the court, Sullivan has left open the possibility of civil contempt proceedings against Blanche personally, a step that would mark a rare escalation in a federal court's dealings with a sitting attorney general. The Justice Department's appeal of Sullivan's earlier injunction remains separately pending before the D.C. Circuit, meaning the underlying legal question of how much DOJ must disclose could ultimately be resolved above the district court regardless of what happens this week.