Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, said Thursday he is confident he can force a House vote on a follow-up Epstein transparency bill once Congress returns after the midterm elections. "When we return next week, we'll get 218 signatures for Epstein Files Transparency Act II, which guarantees a vote," Massie wrote on X.
The mechanism is a discharge petition, a procedural tool that lets a majority of the House pull a bill out of committee and force a floor vote without the support of leadership. Discharge Petition No. 27, which Massie filed on August 31 to advance the bill, sits at 216 signatures, two short of the 218 required. According to the Clerk of the House, 212 Democrats and four Republicans have signed: Massie, Nancy Mace, Ralph Norman and Brian Fitzpatrick. Massie says two Democrats who were out sick have pledged to sign when the House returns.
The bill itself, H.R. 9694, was introduced on July 15, 2026, by Massie with Democratic Representatives Ro Khanna of California and Teresa Leger Fernandez of New Mexico, with a Senate companion from Senators Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico. It would give survivors access to unredacted records about themselves and give state attorneys general, district attorneys, victims and members of Congress standing to sue the attorney general over parts of the first transparency law the Justice Department has not followed.
The first Epstein Files Transparency Act passed the House 427-1 on November 18, 2025, and was signed into law by President Donald Trump. It required the Justice Department to release millions of government records related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The department said on January 30 that it had released more than three million additional pages, bringing the total released to nearly 3.5 million pages, including 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. Massie says the government is still withholding more than three million files.
Even if the petition reaches 218 when the House meets at noon on Monday, November 9, the first moment new signatures can be added, House rules require the discharge motion to sit on the Discharge Calendar for seven legislative days before it can be called up. That pushes any vote on the bill itself toward late November at the earliest, with the first week of December the likeliest window.
Massie filed the second discharge petition on the night of August 31, hours after naming 14 people on the House floor he said should be investigated and prosecuted as Epstein co-conspirators. He said at the time that appearing in the files does not by itself prove guilt.
