Yasin Gungor
22 July 2025•Update: 22 July 2025
ISTANBUL
US House Speaker Mike Johnson announced Tuesday he will shut down the chamber early for the August recess, blocking Democratic efforts to force votes on releasing investigation files on disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Republicans cancelled votes scheduled for Thursday. The chamber will begin recess Wednesday afternoon instead of the previously planned schedule.
Johnson said it is the last leadership news conference before the House of Representatives enters the August recess.
"What we refuse to do is participate in another one of the Democrats' political games," Johnson told reporters. "This is a serious matter. We are not going to let them use this as a political battering ram," he said.
Johnson said Democrats have engaged in "endless efforts to politicize the Epstein controversy."
He acknowledged competing priorities, stating Republicans and US President Donald Trump support "maximum transparency" while protecting "innocent victims" of "Epstein evil."
Johnson emphasized the need for careful handling of documents involving minors and other victims of the crimes.
"We cannot be careless in an open release like that," he said, noting similar standards exist in courts and law enforcement.
Johnson accused democrats of hypocrisy on the Epstein files. “They controlled the Department of Justice for the last four years … They had all these files the entire time.”
He said Democrat members of Congress, who are pushing for the release of the files, did not do it during former President Joe Biden’s term. “They had exactly zero posts on the subject for the last four years,” he said.
“We are done being lectured on transparency by the same party that orchestrated one of the most shameless, dangerous political coverups in the history of this country or any government on the face of planet Earth,” said Johnson, referring to the alleged cover-up of Biden’s mental health during his presidency.
The move comes as Trump finds himself in a whirlwind with the Epstein files -- the collection of government documents that the Justice Department has so far refused to make public, that is driving the largest wedge to date within the president's Make America Great Again, or MAGA, movement, that he popularized during his 2026 and 2024 presidential campaigns.
The Justice Department announced last week that it determined Epstein died by suicide in 2019 and claimed he had no "client list," sparking discontent among the president’s MAGA supporters.
Trump has called the Epstein scandal a "hoax" and demanded his supporters move on, even as they continue to clamor for the release of the documents, including the "client list" that Attorney General Pam Bondi said in February was "sitting on my desk right now."
