Lisa Desjardins:
This was an extraordinary news conference. These survivors, you could see it was meaningful to them to bring their story to the Capitol to lawmakers.
They’re angry. They want the files released. There are two tracks about the file release. One is the Department of Justice is sending files to a House Republican committee. They are going through it. It’s under subpoena. Those are the 34,000 pages that we got last night.
But the thing about that, Amna, is, as we first surmised, most of those documents really are not relevant to any new information. Some of them are repeat documents. So there are skeptics who say either the Department of Justice may slow-roll this or they’re not going to give us what we need.
So that’s the second track, which is a bill from Representatives Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna. They would force the Department of Justice to release all of the information they have from the Epstein files. That’s what these survivors said they want.
Now, the trick is, there are two more Republicans needed to sign on to that bill in order to force a vote. Speaker Johnson told Republicans this morning that actually the survivors don’t want that bill.
Wait a minute. I asked the survivors in person. I said, what — is that true? Are you worried about your protections? And they said, no, that’s not right. We do want this bill.
So momentum right now seems to me there could be very well a vote on that bill.
