Jeffrey Epstein did not have the same level of impact in the Senate as the House, but the discourse pushed by many congressional Democrats, and some Republicans, is unlikely to go away when lawmakers return next week.
And the level of Epstein hysteria in Congress may have had an unlikely impact in derailing Republicans’ push in the upper chamber to ram through President Donald Trump’s nominees.
Senate Republicans tried and failed to strike a deal with Senate Democrats to push through dozens of non-controversial nominees, particularly picks that made it through committee with bipartisan support.
Only Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who glided through the Senate unanimously earlier this year, has not been met by Democrats’ blockade.
Rules changes are in the works, but the avenue of using recess appointments, which requires the Senate to adjourn and the House to come into session for the president to elevate his picks on a temporary basis, was all but shot down after House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., sent lawmakers home early to sidestep the simmering push to release documents related to Epstein’s case.
‘When the House had an opportunity to take votes on the Epstein files, Speaker Johnson skedaddled out of town, launching the Epstein recess,’ Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said last month. ‘This is not complicated.’
‘After promising full transparency for years, every single time Trump, his administration, Republican leaders have had a chance to be transparent about the Epstein files, they’ve chosen to hide. The evasions, the delays, the excuses, they’re not just odd, they’re alarming.’
Many Republicans in the upper chamber agree that there should be more transparency, but caution that no materials should be released until the names or identifying traits of victims are combed through and kept safe.
Others question why Democrats suddenly care about the Epstein situation.
Sen. Roger Marshall, who supported turning to recess appointments to break Democrats’ log jam, told Fox News Digital that it didn’t ‘make sense to me, and this is part of their psychosis, that they are so separated from reality,’ to keep pushing the Epstein issue.
‘They had four years to do something with this, and it was just quite the opposite,’ the Kansas Republican said. ‘As I recall, just quite the opposite. It was almost like they were hiding something.’
‘My frustration is how they used it to circumvent the agenda of the American people… this is all they’ve got,’ he continued. ‘What else do they have? They don’t have a leader, they don’t have an agenda. They don’t have solutions. All they know is, if it’s President Trump, they’re not going to like it, very matter of fact, they’re going to hate it at the sacrifice of the entire country.’
Meanwhile, Epstein engulfed Washington once again on Friday, with the House Oversight Committee receiving a trove of related documents and the interview between Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche becoming public.
When asked about the files eventually coming to light, Trump told reporters that he was in support of keeping them ‘totally open,’ and charged that Democrats were using Epstein as a smokescreen to detract from his administration’s work.
‘The whole Epstein thing is a Democrat hoax,’ he said. ‘We had the greatest six months, seven months in the history of the presidency, and the Democrats don’t know what to do, so they keep bringing up that stuff.’