The House of Representatives returned to Washington on Tuesday.
After the August recess, Mike Johnson was hoping for enthusiasm to cool among Republicans demanding the release of documents from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.
He received the opposite.
Lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday evening published more than 33,000 pages of documents related to the investigation, obtained from the Justice Department through subpoena.
The move was immediately derided as a distraction by Democrats — who pointed out that just 3% of the documents released on Tuesday were newly-public.
"The 33,000 pages of Epstein documents James Comer has decided to 'release' were already mostly public information. To the American people – don't let this fool you," said the committee's top Democrat, Rep. Robert Garcia.
He went on to demand that Attorney General Pam Bondi fully comply with the committee's subpoena.
The committee's chairman, Rep. James Comer, didn't commit to putting the same kind of pressure on the Justice Department for more documents.
But the other push by members of the House for Epstein-related documents is causing even more problems for Mike Johnson and Donald Trump.
Rep. Thomas Massie, the co-sponsor of a bipartisan discharge petition that would force the Justice Deparment to release those files, told reporters that the committee's release was insufficient, and that his petition would not be dropped.
"Look, if my legislation were redundant, why would the White House be trying to stop it? It's not redundant. There are things that the White House doesn't want out there that my legislation would cause to be released," he said in response to a question from Inside Washington's Eric Garcia.
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