(Corrects day of week in first sentence)
By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The top Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives said on Tuesday he would send lawmakers home a day early for a five-week summer recess to avoid a political fight over files on disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The move averts a push by Democrats and some Republicans for a vote on a bipartisan resolution to require the Justice Department and FBI to release all government documents on Epstein, who died by suicide in prison in 2019.
“What we refuse to do is participate in another one of the Democrats’ political games. This is a serious matter. We are not going to let them use this as a political battering ram,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, of Louisiana, told reporters.
Many of President Donald Trump’s supporters who embraced a slew of conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein saw their hopes raised when the administration vowed to release a slew of new documents on the case, only to backtrack and say it had concluded that there was no evidence to support the theories.
That opened a rare breach between Trump and parts of his Make America Great Again base of support. Majorities of Americans and Trump’s Republicans say they believed the government is hiding details on the case, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling.
On Monday, Democrats sought to use a House Rules Committee meeting to force a vote on the Epstein resolution introduced by Republican Representative Thomas Massie and Democratic Representative Ro Khanna. The panel serves as gatekeeper for floor-bound legislation. Republicans instead suspended the hearing, preventing the panel from approving bills for floor consideration this week.
The House had been expected to hold the week’s final votes on Thursday. But House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, the chamber’s No. 2 Republican, told reporters there would be votes on Tuesday and Wednesday for less important legislation considered under suspension of the rules.
A subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite and Epstein’s longtime girlfriend, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence after being convicted of sex trafficking in 2021.
Under mounting pressure from Trump supporters for the release of material, Attorney General Pam Bondi has asked a federal judge to unseal grand jury transcripts in the cases of both Epstein and Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 of five federal charges related to her role in Epstein’s alleged sexual abuse of underage girls.
(Editing by Scott Malone and Mark Porter)
