Congressman Ro Khanna is promising that a press conference on Wednesday with 10 alleged victims of deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein will be “explosive” and will help build pressure in Congress to force the release of files related to Epstein’s business and personal dealings. Mr. Khanna says some of the unnamed victims who will appear at Capitol Hill during Congress’ first week back after its summer break have never spoken out before. 

Mr. Khanna is teaming up with his libertarian-aligned Republican friend from Kentucky, Congressman Thomas Massie, who has drawn the ire of fellow GOP members in recent months. Mr. Massie’s push to force disclosure of the Epstein files has befuddled Republican leadership. 

“I don’t understand Thomas Massie’s motivation. I really don’t. I don’t know how his mind works,” Speaker Johnson said at a press conference in July.

During an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Mr. Khanna said he is “confident” that the press conference will put pressure on his colleagues to back his discharge petition, which is a procedural measure to force a vote on the floor. If Messrs. Khanna and Massie can get 218 signatures on their petition, then Mr. Johnson will be forced to put a bill on the floor that requires Attorney General Bondi to release the Epstein files within 30 days. 

“We will have the petition live on September 2nd. We have all 212 Democrats committed to signing it. He has 12 Republicans. Only six of them have to sign it,” Mr. Khanna said. “What will be explosive is the September 3rd press conference that both of us are having with 10 Epstein victims, many who have never spoken out before.” 

“They will be telling their story, and they will be saying clearly to the American public that they want the release of the Epstein files for full closure on this matter,” he said. 

Some of the MAGA movement’s most diehard adherents in the House have already said they will sign on to the discharge petition when it becomes available on Tuesday. Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of South Carolina, Eric Burlison of Missouri, and Tim Burchett of Tennessee are among those who have already backed the petition. 

When Ms. Bondi announced in early July that there would be no further disclosures of anything related to Epstein, the furor was immediate. Just days later, at a gathering of the conservative group Turning Point USA in Florida, several speakers, including MAGA media darlings Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, demanded that someone was hiding something as it relates to Epstein and his connections to some of the world’s most powerful people. 

After that TPUSA conference, President Trump began deriding the whole Epstein affair as a “hoax” invented by the Democrats. He said he no longer wanted the support of any Republican who was still pushing for a disclosure of the Epstein files. 

Ahead of Congress’s August recess, it appeared that the House would take up a resolution related to Epstein as a way to blunt the momentum of the Massie–Khanna discharge petition. However, Mr. Johnson canceled House votes a day early in order to avoid the whole affair and send lawmakers home for more than a month. 

The House Oversight Committee, led by Congressman James Comer, has launched its own investigation into the Epstein saga, which includes subpoenas for testimony from Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell as well as documents from the Epstein estate. 

Mr. Comer is also spending the next six weeks interviewing the likes of President Clinton, Mr. Trump’s first-term labor secretary, Alex Acosta, and other government officials who were involved with Epstein either in their personal lives or in dealings with him as government officers. 

According to the most recent polling, voters overwhelmingly disapprove of how Mr. Trump and his administration have handled the Epstein files drama thus far. Even a sizable number of Republicans — 28 percent — disapprove of how the president is dealing with it, according to a survey from YouGov released at the end of July. 

That same poll shows 61 percent of all voters disapproving of Mr. Trump’s handling of the Epstein drama, compared to only 21 percent who approve. Among independent voters, 70 percent disapprove of how the president has demanded any files be kept under seal.