Forty-two California Democrats have signed Rep. Thomas Massie’s petition for a bill letting states, victims and lawmakers sue over withheld records; the Justice Department says it complied with the 2025 law.
A petition that would force a House vote on a second Epstein records bill remained two signatures short early Tuesday, as the House opened a lame-duck session with a full agenda and a shrinking calendar.
Discharge Petition No. 27, filed Aug. 31 by Rep. Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, listed 216 signatures on the House clerk’s website when The Inquirer checked it early Tuesday: 212 Democrats and four Republicans, Mr. Massie and Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania. The most recent signatures are dated Sept. 16. A petition needs 218, a majority of the House, to bring a measure to the floor without the leadership’s consent.
Mr. Massie wrote on Nov. 5 that “when we return next week, we’ll get 218 signatures,” according to CiVL. He and Democratic co-sponsors have said two Democrats who were out sick in September pledged to sign.
The Justice Department’s position
The Justice Department says it has already done what the law requires. The original Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed by President Trump on Nov. 19, 2025, directed the attorney general to publish the department’s Epstein records. On Jan. 30, the department said it had released nearly 3.5 million pages in compliance with the act, that more than 500 attorneys and reviewers worked on the release, and that material not produced consisted of duplicates, privileged records, items covered by the law’s exceptions or records unrelated to the Epstein and Maxwell cases.
Attorney General Todd Blanche has acknowledged errors in redacting some victims’ names. “Whenever we learned that any victim’s name had been improperly non-redacted, we immediately took the document down and fixed it as soon as we could,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 15, ABC News reported. “That doesn’t excuse the mistakes of which I take full responsibility, but it does mean that we tried to fix them. We — we complied with the act.”
The White House has made a broader case. Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, told Spectrum News in July that “by releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena request, signing the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and calling for more investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends, President Trump has done more for Epstein’s victims than anyone before him.”
The Justice Department and the House Judiciary Committee’s press office did not respond to requests for comment from The Inquirer.
What the second bill would do
The measure, H.R. 9694, the Epstein Files Transparency Act II, was introduced July 15 by Mr. Massie, Rep. Ro Khanna of Fremont and Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico. It would let state attorneys general, district attorneys, other authorized state officers, victims and members of Congress sue the attorney general in federal court over records they say were withheld or improperly redacted, according to the bill’s sponsors and the text as introduced. Victims could obtain unredacted records about themselves, the department could not invoke common-law privileges such as deliberative process to withhold covered records, and existing federal penalties would apply to officials who conceal or falsify them.
Its sponsors say the department is still withholding millions of files. Seventeen state attorneys general wrote to congressional leaders on Oct. 15 urging passage, The Dispute Index reported. The department disputes the sponsors’ characterization and says unreleased material falls into categories the original law permits it to withhold.
Mr. Khanna, who co-wrote the 2025 law with Mr. Massie, has made the issue a signature cause. The first law passed the House 427 to 1 after the two used a discharge petition to bring it to the floor over the objections of Speaker Mike Johnson, who had urged Republicans not to sign. Mr. Khanna, who has made repeated trips to New Hampshire as he considers a 2028 presidential campaign, said when the bill was introduced that “the DOJ has violated our law, delayed the release of millions of files, botched the redactions, and denied the survivors justice.”
Where California’s delegation stands
California supplies a fifth of the signatures. The clerk’s list includes 42 California Democrats, among them Mr. Khanna, who signed the first day, and Reps. Nancy Pelosi, Zoe Lofgren, Mike Thompson and Jared Huffman, who signed Sept. 1 or 2. Reps. Lateefah Simon, Mark DeSaulnier, Aisha Wahab, Sam Liccardo, Doris Matsui and Ami Bera signed Sept. 15; Reps. Kevin Mullin and Jimmy Panetta signed Sept. 16.
Of the Bay Area and Northern California Democrats, Rep. John Garamendi is not on the list. No California Republican has signed.
The calendar problem
Reaching 218 does not produce an immediate vote. Under House rules, a petition that gathers a majority is placed on a calendar, and after seven legislative days a signer may announce an intention to call it up, after which the leadership must schedule it. The House is scheduled to sit only 16 days before government funding expires Dec. 11, and all pending petitions expire when the 119th Congress ends on Jan. 3.
Democrats will hold the House majority in the next Congress, which could bring the bill to the floor without a petition. But the four Republican signers, all of whom are leaving the House in January according to ABC News, would not be there. Mr. Massie, who lost a Republican primary this year, is also pressing a separate resolution to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, which Mr. Hegseth has called “sham articles of impeachment.”
Rep. Andy Barr, a Kentucky Republican, said in September that he had already voted to release the files and was not interested in grandstanding, Spectrum News reported.
For Californians, the question is less about the state’s own role than about who gets to enforce a federal disclosure law. If the bill passes, state prosecutors, including California’s, would gain a route to court that they do not have today.
Adaeze Monroe covers Congress, the White House and federal agencies, with a focus on what Washington’s decisions mean for California, for the Washington Bureau. More from Adaeze Monroe
