Congressman Thomas Massie is celebrating an imminent vote on his bipartisan bill to force disclosure of the so-called Epstein files, which is due to take place on the House floor in the next two weeks. With Democrats winning a special election in Arizona on Tuesday, Mr. Massie says he will now have a majority of House members supporting his resolution to bring his bill to the floor. 

Mr. Massie and a Democrat, Congressman Ro Khanna, over the summer introduced what is known as a discharge petition, a procedural measure that allows rank-and-file members to bring legislation to the floor without the consent of House leadership. 

If Messrs. Massie and Khanna can get a majority of the House — 218 members — to sign the petition, then their bill must be brought up for a vote. Mr. Massie, three other Republicans, and all 212 Democrats have already signed the petition. The new lawmaker from Arizona, Adelita Grijalva, will be sworn in next week. Mr. Khanna says she has already pledged to sign on to the petition. 

“We’re going to have 218 signatures and we’re going to force a vote on releasing those files,” Mr. Massie said at a press event with Senator Rand Paul in Kentucky on Wednesday morning. 

The bill from Messrs. Massie and Khanna would require Attorney General Pam Bondi to release all Department of Justice records related to Jeffrey Epstein within 30 days. The only records that could be left under seal would be any pornographic images or videos, anything related to ongoing prosecutions or investigations, or any records which would impact national security. 

Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans have been critical of Mr. Massie for going against the president and the Republican majority to push for a forced disclosure of the files. The House Oversight Committee is conducting its own investigation into Epstein. The committee has already released tens of thousands of files that it received from the justice department, though Mr. Massie says that that is not enough. 

“They’re allowing the DOJ to curate all of the information that the DOJ is giving them,” Mr. Massie said at a rally outside of the Capitol with alleged Epstein survivors in early September. “If you’ve looked at the pages that they’ve released so far, they’re heavily redacted.”

Mr. Johnson says that the Oversight Committee’s investigation is more than enough to get Mr. Massie the answers he wants. The speaker argues that committee work is the necessary, proper, and thoughtful way to handle the investigation. 

“We have a subpoena, which must be enforced and that does have the force of law, so it’s even more effective than a vote on the floor,” Mr. Johnson told The New York Sun earlier this month. 

One member of the Oversight Committee, Congressman Clay Higgins, railed against Mr. Massie, whom he calls a friend, in an X post Wednesday morning. He calls Mr. Massie’s effort “weird.”

“Thomas Massie is 100% wrong, on so many levels, with his political maneuver Epstein petition,” Mr. Higgins writes. “The Oversight Committee is conducting an official investigation into Epstein related matters and we’re following all established rules of criminal justice procedure.”

“It’s a shame,” he argues. 

Democrats have been having their fun mocking President Trump for his years-long friendship with Epstein, which the president says ended well before Epstein was first prosecuted for having sex with a minor. 

It isn’t just Democrats, however. Ahead of Mr. Trump’s visit to the United Kingdom last week, two people were arrested for projecting images of the president and Epstein onto the side of Windsor Castle. On Tuesday, a statue of Mr. Trump and Epstein appeared on the grounds of the National Mall, though it had been removed as of Wednesday morning.