Lawmakers in both parties fighting to force the Trump administration to release all the federal files on Jeffrey Epstein took a big step closer to their goal this week.

Adelita Grijalva’s victory on Tuesday in a special House election in southern Arizona sends another Democrat to Capitol Hill and secures the deciding endorsement of the procedural tool forcing a House vote on legislation to compel the Justice Department to disclose the still-concealed documents related to the late child sex offender.

That procedural tool, known as a discharge petition, currently has 217 signatures. Grijalva is set to make it 218, meeting the threshold to force the underlying proposal to the floor even over the objections of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and other GOP leaders, who are siding with President Trump in opposition to the bill.

The milestone is highly unusual: Only a handful of discharge petitions have been successful this century. And it would mark a coup for its lead sponsor, GOP Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.), a frequent Trump critic who has accused those in his own party of protecting pedophiles to prevent embarrassing revelations about wealthy Republican donors. 

“I do believe that Trump is not implicated,” Massie said as Congress headed into this week’s long holiday recess. “[But] I believe that Trump is trying to protect rich and powerful people who are his friends, and that is why this material is not getting released.”

The petition’s likely success is also a setback for Trump, who had campaigned last year on promises to unveil the government files on Epstein, only to reverse course in recent weeks to say the investigation is over because the whole controversy was a “hoax” cooked up by Democrats to hurt him politically. 

He’s urging his MAGA base supporters who have been the fuel behind the Epstein conspiracy theories for years to abandon the campaign, or he’ll abandon them.

“Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore!” he posted on Truth Social last month. 

Massie has been unmoved. And his petition has already been endorsed by every sitting Democrat and three other Republicans Reps. Nancy Mace (S.C.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (Colo.) bringing the signature count to 217. 

Grijalva, who will replace her father, the late Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), has vowed to sign it as soon as she’s sworn in, which would start the clock towards an Epstein vote as early as late October. The precise timeline, however, remains in flux.

The House was initially scheduled to be in session next Monday and Tuesday, but GOP leaders cancelled those days in order to put pressure on Democratic leaders to support a Republican spending bill ahead of a Wednesday shutdown. The revision has pushed the House’s official return to Oct. 7. 

Once Grijalva signs the petition, supporters must wait an additional seven legislative days before one of them can go to the floor to announce an intent to offer the discharge motion on the Epstein bill. The Speaker is then required to stage a vote on the proposal within two legislative days a timeline which, if the current calendar holds, sets the stage for an Epstein vote during the week of Oct. 20, when the House is scheduled to be in session for four days.

The success of the petition is not a slam dunk, even with Grijalva’s imminent arrival. GOP leaders still have time to convince one or more of the Republican supporters to remove their names, preventing the necessary 218 signatures.

Johnson could also seek to “table” the discharge petition as part of a preceding rule a gambit that was successful earlier in the year when GOP leaders wanted to sink a resolution establishing remote voting for the lower chamber, even after it had secured the 218 names to force a floor vote. That strategy, however, would require those Republicans who have signed the Epstein petition to support a rule that would effectively kill the bill, and there’s been no indication that any of those four GOP lawmakers are ready to back down. 

The legislation, sponsored by Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), would require the DOJ to post, in searchable form, every record the agency possesses related to its investigations into both Epstein, who died by suicide in prison in 2019, and Ghislaine Maxwell, his former girlfriend who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for crimes related to the sexual abuse of minors.

Johnson and GOP leaders oppose the legislation, arguing that it has little chance of success since it would still have to move through the Senate, and win Trump’s signature, to become law. The Speaker is advocating instead for a separate investigation being led by Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who has already released thousands of files obtained under subpoena from both the DOJ and Epstein’s estate. 

Among those documents was a now notorious “birthday book,” compiled by Maxwell for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003, which includes a lewd entry bearing Trump’s signature. The White House has said the entry is fake, and Trump has filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, which first reported on it. 

Comer’s team has also orchestrated a series of interviews with key figures in the Epstein saga, including former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr and former U.S. prosecutor Alexander Acosta, whose secret plea deal with Epstein, following his first arrest on child sex charges in 2006, has since come under fire as being too lenient.

“We continue to believe the Committee’s investigative process is the most appropriate avenue to provide the American people with transparency and the survivors of Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell with accountability and justice,” Comer wrote last week in a letter updating Johnson on his probe. 

Massie and those supporting his discharge petition dispute those arguments, saying Johnson’s method places too much trust in Trump and the DOJ to release information they don’t want made public.

“The DOJ’s curating all of that, and they’re releasing what they want to release,” he said. “People are going to go through [the documents] and say, ‘Hey, wait. There’s nothing new here. This is stuff we already knew.’ And then that will only incite people to be more upset that there’s no transparency.”

During a hearing of the Judiciary Committee last week, Massie pressed FBI Director Kash Patel who had long promoted Epstein conspiracy theories on a purported list of 20 people Epstein’s victims have identified to the FBI as being involved in Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking. 

“This is not a hoax. There are more names. Those names are not being released,” Massie said. 

“The only argument for not releasing those names is either the FBI doesn’t think the victims are credible,” he added, “or they don’t want to embarrass those rich and powerful people.”