{"id":55405,"date":"2025-11-19T00:48:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T00:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/55405\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T00:48:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T00:48:08","slug":"all-texas-republicans-in-congress-vote-to-release-epstein-files","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/55405\/","title":{"rendered":"All Texas Republicans in Congress vote to release Epstein files"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2013 All Texas Republicans in Congress voted Tuesday to require the Justice Department to release materials related to the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein<\/a>, after President Donald Trump<\/a> dropped his resistance and urged GOP lawmakers to do so.<\/p>\n

U.S Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin, did not vote. Other Texas Democrats were unanimous in voting to require the release.<\/p>\n

Republican lawmakers echoed Trump\u2019s statements from earlier in the week that it was time to get past the controversy and focus on their party\u2019s achievements.<\/p>\n

Democrats said Republicans were simply caving to pressure.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese Republicans have been dragging their feet, doing everything they can to block and obstruct the release of the files until it became very, very clear that this was going to happen,\u201d U.S. Rep. Julie Johnson, D-Farmers Branch, said in a video<\/a> she posted to X after the vote.<\/p>\n

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Only one lawmaker voted against the legislation – U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La.<\/p>\n

In her video, Johnson noted that many of Epstein\u2019s victims have been in Washington, D.C., begging for justice and accountability. She called for keeping pressure on the Senate to take up the measure and she didn\u2019t have to wait long.<\/p>\n

The Senate later in the afternoon agreed to pass the measure by unanimous consent<\/a> when it\u2019s received, a procedure that means no senator objects and no roll call vote is recorded.<\/p>\n

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, highlighted on his podcast earlier this week how Trump had urged Republican lawmakers to vote for the measure.<\/p>\n

\u201cHouse Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it\u2019s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party, including our recent Victory on the Democrat \u2018Shutdown,\u2019\u201d Trump wrote on Truth Social<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cruz alluded to the administration\u2019s previous reluctance to release the Epstein materials and speculated it could be because some Republican is implicated in the files.<\/p>\n

Cruz suggested Trump decided it was worth embarrassing that hypothetical Republican in order to quell controversy over the files and focus attention on Republican accomplishments.<\/p>\n

Cruz highlighted Epstein\u2019s support for various Democrats and said he hopes anyone who sexually assaulted underage girls will be prosecuted. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe can have some real accountability to people who committed criminal acts and hurt underage girls,\u201d Cruz said.<\/p>\n

Tuesday\u2019s vote came after pressure had built all year. A small number of Republicans joined Democrats in supporting a \u201cdischarge petition\u201d to force a vote on releasing the files.<\/p>\n

They were one signature short of forcing the vote as Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., kept the House out of session during the shutdown and said he would not swear in a newly elected Democrat from Arizona until the government was open again.<\/p>\n

Her recent swearing-in meant a vote on releasing the files was going to be required.<\/p>\n

U.S. Rep. Keith Self, R-McKinney, had previously co-sponsored the proposal<\/a> to require release of the files but declined to sign onto the discharge petition to force a vote on it.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy message on the Epstein files has been consistent from the start: Expose the criminals, protect the victims, and give Americans the transparency they deserve,\u201d Self said Tuesday on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n

U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, told reporters Republicans brought up and passed the proposal in an effort to look better after resisting the files\u2019 release for so long.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that there is an about face. I think that they are trying to save face, and we will see what kind of games they continue to play,\u201d Crockett said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2013 All Texas Republicans in Congress voted Tuesday to require the Justice Department to release materials related…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2671,3481,287,27,29,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-55405","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-congress","9":"tag-jasmine-crockett","10":"tag-politics","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-texas-headlines","13":"tag-texas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}