House Speaker Mike Johnson really, really doesn’t want a floor vote on releasing the controversial Epstein files. So much so that he and House Republicans are refusing to swear in Adelita Grijalva, who won a special election for Arizona’s 7th Congressional District on Sept. 23. Instead, they are saying she’ll be sworn in when the House comes back for its regular session.
There’s one big reason for this, which is that Grijalva would be the final signature needed to force a vote, and Johnson can’t have that now, can he?
Arizona Democratic candidate Adelita Grijalva was declared the winner against Republican Daniel Butierez to fill the 7th Congressional District seat held by the late U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva in a Sept. 23 special election.
This is a fairly breathtaking level of hypocrisy, even by the current near-constant level of rank hypocrisy pumped out by the right on a near-constant basis. When explaining why they refused to swear Grijalva in on Sept. 30, GOP Rep. Morgan Griffith told Grijalva that “Historically, you do it when the House is in session other than pro forma.”
Oh, do you? Really? Because back in April, when Republicans won a pair of special elections in Florida, those folks were sworn in the next day. In a pro forma session.
What Griffith is referring to here is that the House is not in regular session. However, the Constitution says that neither body of Congress can adjourn for more than three days without consent from the other chamber. So, both bodies will conduct pro forma sessions, where they gavel in, then immediately gavel out the session. Votes can’t be taken during a pro forma session, but there’s no impediment to swearing new members in.
And obviously, when Republicans need the numbers, they’re happy to move quickly and totally fine with swearing in during a pro forma session. But when they very much do not want the balance of power to shift even slightly, suddenly there’s a new rule.
Johnson is such a wuss that he hasn’t even responded to inquiries from Grijalva, so she has pretty much been learning about every excuse being given from the press. This also means that she’s not even sure what day, exactly, Johnson will get around to swearing her in. It could be Oct. 7, when the House resumes its regular session, but Grijalva suspects Johnson may try to delay it even further and push it back to Oct. 14, after the special election results have been officially canvassed by the state.
Related | Democratic win in Arizona could force House vote on Epstein files
Forcing Grijalva to wait until the state’s official certification is also rank hypocrisy. When Republican Randy Fine won the race for Florida’s 6th Congressional District, he was sworn in on April 2, despite the votes not being certified until April 11.
So, Johnson may deprive the people of Arizona’s 7th Congressional District from having any representation in the House for as long as three weeks, all to protect Trump from any consequences due to his decades-long friendship with a convicted sex offender and alleged sex trafficker.
Johnson’s continual efforts to protect Trump from the release of the Epstein files border on the comical, with the speaker even bizarrely claiming that Trump was an FBI informant, which he presumably thought would somehow explain away Trump’s coziness with Epstein.
Before the House’s summer break, Johnson blocked all floor votes related to releasing the files and even ended the House session to avoid a vote on it. When asked about a floor vote on releasing the files, Johnson said there was no need because “the administration is already doing this,” a thing the administration is very much not doing.
There’s a whole-of-government effort to stop the Epstein files from ever getting out, which makes it clear that there is, indeed, something for Trump to worry about in those files. So we all get to watch the person who wrote moralistic screeds about how homosexuality leads to legalized pedophilia go to the mat to protect the files of a notorious accused pedophile.
Except we know who Johnson is really protecting here, and we know he’s going to do just about everything to make sure those files don’t see the light of day because they could implicate Trump. After all, Republicans consider making sure Trump gets his way on all things their only duty, and loyal lapdog Johnson understands the assignment.
