House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) agreed with liberal Call To Activism host Joe Gallina that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is obstructing the confirmation of newly-elected Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) to stave off the final vote on the bipartisan discharge petition to compel the release of the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case files.
Johnson plans not to bring back lawmakers throughout next week to conduct business, and while observers suspect delaying an Epstein vote is the main cause, another potential side effect is dragging out a potential government shutdown.
Grijalva, who was elected to replace her late father, progressive icon Rep. Raúl Grijalva, is expected, once sworn in, to cast that final vote for the petition, which was introduced by Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY). President Donald Trump and Republican leadership have opposed the resolution and done everything in their power to stop it.
"It looks like Speaker Johnson is literally slow-walking Adelita Grijalva to her seat," said Gallina. "She just won the special election. She, importantly, is that final needed vote on that discharge petition to release the Epstein files and get that vote on the floor, and it looks like Republicans want to delay, delay, maybe so they can pressure other Republicans. What's your perspective about that?"
"I think you're exactly right," said Jeffries. "There's reason to believe that House Republicans are trying to push back the swearing in of Representative-elect Grijalva, who is going to be a tremendous representative, following in the footsteps of her legendary father, Chairman Grijalva. And, you know, there's no controversy as it relates to who won that election. Zero controversy. She won. She won decisively. And what has happened in every other instance is, when there is a clear winner, and Republicans just did this in Florida, in the aftermath of the special elections in April, is swear their members in immediately. And Representative-elect Grijalva should be treated with the same level of respect."
"And if she's not treated with that same level of respect, we are going to forcefully use whatever tools are available to us in the Congress to push back and make sure we're highlighting for the public that this is probably being done because she's the 218th vote on releasing the Epstein files, which they've been hiding from the American people" said Jeffries. "And they're frightened to death, clearly, about what's in them."
