Mike Johnson Is Enraged the Senate Would Dare Pass the Epstein Bill He Voted for Hours Earlier

By Jim Vorel | November 19, 2025 | 3:31pm

Photo by Office of Speaker Mike Johnson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Congress Jeffrey Epstein

Mike Johnson Is Enraged the Senate Would Dare Pass the Epstein Bill He Voted for Hours Earlier

You know, if I didn’t know better, I would think that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson really, really still doesn’t want to see the release of the Epstein Files, despite the fact that that he joined in favor of releasing them with 426 other members of the House of Representatives yesterday, in what was ultimately a 427 to 1 (GOP Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana was the one pointless hold-out, if you were wondering) blowout. Why else would the Speaker be raging that the U.S. Senate would dare to immediately pass the bill? The bill that he himself voted for just a few hours earlier, to reiterate? Leaving Tuesday evening’s state dinner with Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who Trump was sure to let off the hook for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi earlier in the day (no hard feelings on murder!), Johnson told MSNOW that he’s Big Mad that the Senate agreed to unanimously pass the bill as soon as it was received.

“I am deeply disappointed in this outcome,” said Johnson in reference to the thing he just voted for. “I was just told that Chuck Schumer rushed it to the floor and put it out there preemptively. It needed amendments. I just spoke to the president about that. We’ll see what happens.”

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Asked whether their “concerns” could lead to Trump vetoing the bill when it arrives on his desk as soon as today, Johnson went unsurprisingly noncommittal, saying “I’m not saying that. I don’t know.” And in all fairness, I’m sure he does not in fact know, given that not even the third ranking person in the U.S. Presidential line of succession likely has any clue what Trump is going to do or say even moments before it happens. In a party completely overthrown by fascistic fealty to Dear Leader, reality is what Trump says it is at any moment, which is how the Epstein Files bill ended up passing through the House of Representatives in the first place.

It’s another absurd moment in the ever-evolving tapestry of ridiculous posturing on Johnson’s part in particular, as he stood in as one of the primary roadblocks to the Epstein Files ever seeing the light of day for months upon months until this week. He had called the bill a “shiny object” and sought to keep it from coming to a vote by any means necessary, even refusing to swear in newly elected Arizona Democrat Rep. Adelita Grijalva for a record 50 days because she had vowed to be the final vote necessary in forcing a vote on the issue. When it became clear that Grijalva would finally need to be sworn in at the end of the government shutdown, Johnson switched up his posturing to claims that the release of the files related to Jeffrey Epstein’s prosecution for federal sex trafficking charges could endanger surviving Epstein victims by revealing their identities.

These objections all had to go out the window instantaneously this weekend, meanwhile, when Trump abruptly reversed his position rather than look weak if House Republicans ignored his commands. After continuously calling the Epstein Files a Democratic “hoax,” Trump suddenly pivoted to instructing House Republicans to pass the bill. And being the most craven creatures imaginable, they all instantly fell on their swords and voted in favor of the thing they had just been decrying, bringing them back to the same side as a suddenly sense-talking (and nakedly ambitious) crazy person like Marjorie Taylor Greene. And so here we have Mike Johnson: The man who fought against the release of the Epstein Files with everything he had, then voted to release them as if nothing happened, and then lambasted the Senate the very same day for also passing the bill he just voted to pass. It does make one wonder if the Trump/MAGA plan was to hope that the bill would somehow be choked by endless discussion and amendments in the Senate, but Majority Leader John Thune seemingly punctured that plan by deciding to not give a shit. To The Independent, he said the following: “When a bill passes the House 427 to one and the president said he’ll sign it into law, I’m not sure that there’s going to be a need for an amendment or desire for an amendment process.”

The Epstein Files bill grants Attorney General Pam Bondi the authority to “withhold or redact” any material that could endanger “national security” or “jeopardize an active federal investigation.”

— Unusual Whales (@unusualwhales.bsky.social) Nov 18, 2025 at 8:13 PM

Trump, meanwhile, is still claiming that he’ll sign the bill whenever it comes across his desk, although questions persist of how much material we’ll actually get in whatever version makes it to the light of day, thanks to the concurrent, NEW investigations begun by the Trump administration DOJ into (exclusively Democrat naturally) other Epstein connections. On Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi refused to directly answer questions on whether the DOJ would comply with the bill, saying that they were investigating “new evidence” and only that the department would “follow the law.” Well, there’s a first time for everything, right?

Jim Vorel is a Paste Media staff writer. You can follow him on Twitter or on Bluesky.