Hours after the House overwhelmingly passed a bill to force the release of files related to the Justice Department’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the Senate quickly moved to pass the legislation by unanimous consent, sending the bill to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature.
Speaking on the Senate floor shortly after 5 p.m., Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was able to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act using unanimous consent — a process where a senator asks the chamber to disregard normal Senate rules and speedily act.
“Donald Trump has tried to cover up for Jeffrey Epstein long enough,” Schumer said on the Senate floor before asking to pass the bill. “It’s time that the Senate finished the job to finally compel the Department of Justice to release the Epstein files.”
The move was so immediate that the Senate hadn’t even formally received the bill. (Schumer took the unusual step of asking that, once the Senate actually gets the bill from the House, the legislation be “deemed as passed.”)
The sudden move to pass the bill in the Senate caps off a chaotic legislative process where Republicans spent months trying to deny Democrats a vote on the bill. In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., was forced to give the legislation a vote only after four Republicans joined all Democrats on a discharge petition.
After Republicans spent months trying to prevent a vote, they suddenly supported the legislation as soon as Democrats reached the magic threshold for the discharge petition. And seeing the legislative writing on the wall that Republicans were about to break with the president, Trump decided to get out ahead of the vote and actually support the bill — a move that further reinforced the numbers and made it functionally impossible for the Senate to ignore the bill.
The quick passage — without amendments — is sure to anger Johnson and some House Republicans. The speaker said he was only supporting the House bill with the expectation that it would be amended in the Senate, citing concerns that the legislation didn’t adequately protect victims from disclosures and would potentially release child sex abuse information.
(The legislation explicitly gives the Attorney General the discretion to redact that sort of information.)
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., didn’t seem to see a need for amendments either, telling reporters Tuesday afternoon that, after the overwhelming House vote, it could be difficult to hold the bill up to make changes.
“I’m not sure there’s going to be a need for or desire for an amendment process over here,” Thune said.
Hearing about Thune’s seeming change of heart about amendments, Johnson said he would “insist” on changes to the bill. “I just saw that,” Johnson said of Thune’s comments on Tuesday. “Look, I talked to John Thune over the weekend, I just texted him. We’re gonna get together and we’ll talk about this. Hold on.” Johnson added that there was “an easy way to amend the legislation” to make sure Congress was acting responsibly and not doing “permanent damage to the Justice system.” But Thune and the Senate didn’t appear to agree. The majority leader took the step of “hotlining” the legislation — a process where each Senate office is contacted to see if a lawmaker has an objection to the bill — and without any senator immediately speaking up, Schumer went to the floor and tried to pass the bill. “This isn’t about Democrats versus Republicans or about Congress versus the president. This is about giving the American people the transparency they’ve been crying for,” Schumer said Tuesday night. “This is about holding accountable all the people in Jeffrey Epstein’s circle who raped, groomed, targeted and enabled the abuse of hundreds of girls for years and years. The American people have waited long enough.”
Kevin Frey is a congressional reporter for MS NOW. Recommended
