427-1

 

     This is the lone Nay vote. Clay Higgins of Louisiana's 3rd District.

     He just shot himself in the foot with a Javelin. 

     The 427-1 vote tally, of course, was to the bill that demands the DOJ release the Epstein files in full. Republicans fought bitterly against the discharge petition. Only four Republicans (Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert) signed the petition. Mike Johnson refused to swear in Adelita Grijalva, who won her special election in AZ-7 last September 23rd, desperately trying to kick the can down the road as far as he could. Then when he had to finally swear her in, she immediately added her name to the petition as promised, setting the process in motion.

     Once the discharge petition went into effect, Mike Johnson was powerless to stop it and all he could do was schedule the vote. And once the discharge petition went through, the other Republicans who refused to sign it knew the jig was up and that there was no future in protecting the pedophile in the White House.

     Every Republican voted to compel the Justice Department to release the full Epstein files. Except for Clay Higgins.

     Now it goes to the Senate and the near unanimous House vote puts pressure on John Thune to hold a vote in the higher chamber. I expect there to be a near unanimous vote in there. Then it goes to Trump's desk.

     Trump did a head fake and demanded Republicans vote to release the Epstein files. When asked about the turnaround, Abigail Jackson actually said, “President Trump has been consistently calling for transparency related to the Epstein files for years – by releasing tens of thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena request”.

     Somehow, she managed to keep a straight face.

     Of course, once Grijalva added her name to the discharge petition and gave it the crucial 218th name, the first thing Trump did was summon Boebert to the White House Situation Room to try to get her to remove her name from it. And, for months, despite his campaign promises, Trump has resorted to every dirty trick in the book to keep those files from coming out.

      This is how he pretended to call for the release of the Epstein files (emphasis mine):

     "Some 'members' of the Republican Party are being 'used,' and we can’t let that happen. Let’s start talking about the Republican Party’s Record Setting Achievements, and not fall into the Epstein 'TRAP,' which is actually a curse on the Democrats, not us. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! The House Oversight Committee can have whatever they are legally entitled to, I DON’T CARE! All I do care about is that Republicans get BACK ON POINT."

     That little caveat, "whatever they are entitled to", is the reason why the full files will not come out.

     It's common practice for the Department of Justice to not release files, even those compelled by Congress, if they pertain to ongoing investigations or prosecutions. Trump has raised the question several times that if the Epstein files were damaging to him, then why didn't the Biden administration release them?

     The short answer is it couldn't.

     So now it's chaos in Pam Bondi's DOJ  with the 427-1 vote They're not waiting for the Senate to do the inevitable. They're going crazy right about now cherry-picking Trump's name out of the files, including the incriminating photos and videos of Trump doing God knows what. They're already busy redacting Trump's name and that of every Republican out of those files so that all we'll get is a sanitized version, one that comports with Ghislaine Maxwell's claim that Trump never did anything wrong.

     Here's the thing- While they were stupid enough to vote for Trump, some of them three times, they won't be mollified with it. They'll know something's up. And they won't be happy.