https://x.com/i/status/1948211079001051267
The GOP chair was caught off guard and scrambled—first delaying the vote, then trying to sabotage it by adding amendments to include Biden administration communications. Democrats called their bluff and agreed.
Then the GOP chair, Rep. Higgins, lied, claiming the motion FAILED until Rep. Robert Garcia forced a full roll call vote.
Ultimately, the vote passed 8-2 after 3 Republicans DEFIED their leadership and joined all 5 Democrats to pass the motion.
Can someone explain to this non-american why the Democrats are treating this as a successful upset when they could have released the Epstein files during Biden?
Because they COULDN’T release them under Biden. They were sealed by court order until January 2025.
There is a lot of desperate “both sides” nonsense going on here but the fact remains, Democrats are voting to release them and Republicans are not. If Democrats wanted to cover them up, why would they be doing that?
I don’t see anyone saying this yet, but the Epstein files were sealed by a court order for Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial. They weren’t unsealed until January of 2025. Biden couldn’t have released them without violating the court order that sealed them - and possibly giving Ghislaine’s lawyers a slam dunk to get her off with a mistrial.
Here is seems to be at the discretion of the Attorney General. Why didn’t Merrick Garland unseal them in September 2024 after her appeal failed?
Merrick Garland is a hard core libertarian centrist and Biden appreciated him for being status quo which means not rocking the boat or doing any effort to to hold anyone rich accountable as his previous bosses were BP and Amazon.
He also refused to prosecute Matt Gaetz.
Read his link. There’s nothing in there to indicate that Garland could’ve released then in 2024.
That does nothing to change the reality of his character or negate his lack of action i pointed out above.
Why did he actually not do anything? Who can say?
Not a good enough excuse IMHO.
Its not meant to be an excuse. He just is a shitty person. Picked because they thought it would reach across the shitty aisle to shitty republicans.
That just is what it is.
It’s not a good excuse. Until Americans guillotine these fuckers, they will just continue to do what they want, law be damned. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZhZs69RvFM
You expected a shitty person to expose his shitty friends? Lmao
Because Merrick Garland is incredibly lazy. He spent his entire tenure sitting around doing nothing.
This doesn’t get the Biden administration off the hook for not releasing the list sooner.
Unlike Trump, Biden respected court orders.
After Maxwell’s appeal failed in September 2024 no related court orders needed to be respected.
Is there any U.S. administration that should be let off the hook in the last 25 years of ratfuckery? I’ll just be happy if your Democrats are desperate enough to combat overt corruption that they’ll accept collateral damage among theirs and their masters.
Because Garland is a heritage foundation boot licker
Garland is a republikkkan and a member of the Federalist Society. He was Biden’s greatest failure.
What exactly did you think that first link proved?
That the Attorney General can decide to declassify and publicly release the files.
Presidents can do whatever they want as long as it’s an official act.
It’s all bread and circuses until the 1% have extracted the last iota of capital from the rest of us and the country finally collapses.
Because they couldn’t, or at least not without potentially ruining the case while it was before the courts at the time?
Politik-brained Canadian here:
IIRC they didn’t raid Epstein till 2019. In 2020 Democrats had a narrow majority in the house which they would lose in 2022.
Than January 6, 2021 happened, and I think everyone thought that would be the legal case that brought Trump down.
It kind of seemed inevitable that the Epstein files would get leaked or released eventually. That is until Trump officially ran again in 2023; creating the possibility that the evidence would be destroyed permanently if he won.
just to tie on to this, theres a none zero chance some prominent democrat “old guard” are also on the list, and their positions are too valuable to be lost (to the status quo). january 6th, if it was enough, would have been a great way to protect the old guard and get rid of trump. but thats evidently not what happened.
i dont care whos on the list, from what side, i want them all punished. anybody whos complicit in the current shit show, or is on that list, needs to be shot in the street like a rabid dog.
While I was still on Reddit, there was a list going around of politicians charged with child sex offences. Sure, there were a few Dems, curse them to hell, but by FAR the majority were Republikkklans. The list was up to page 57 last time I sighted it.
We just need the files. I’m sure there’s gonna be plenty of “I was just on it because he was blackmailing me” or whatever, from everyone involved, innocent or not. Unless there’s something that literally has itemized “X person, 2 kids, diddled both, camera footage timestamp x:xx:xx” I really doubt much legally will come from it.
Court of public opinion however, that’s gonna cause some real shakedowns, if people actually listen.
maybe the video tapes that they took?
I wager the actual chances are in the double digits.
Triple digits?
Last I checked the chances had been reduced by 1000%
And it might have been if they didn’t drag their feet so much.
They full on chickened out!
I have met chickens and they are braver than any politician I’ve seen.
Probably the spine.
Craven Republican “Trump is a threat to democracy.”
Proceeds to vote for acquittal
This is sort of where I keep going back to in my mind. Like, I’ve seen things about supposed redacting or whatnot. So, like, what is there to be released if supporters of the Current Admins had them for so long?
Some like original copy of something somewhere that somebody secreted away?
And, how does something like that get proven to be…legitimate? Especially to a point of actionable repercussions?
I honestly just don’t understand how this all works. Hoping for the damn best though.
The Dems have molesters/rapists on the list themselves. The difference is that we are not cultists and will gladly watch those perverts go to jail. Apparently MAGA just barely started caring about justice as it pertains to the files.
Why were the files not released under Biden? Hell … Bill Clinton is on the list (shocking).
Is that proven?
Everything is still in the “reportedly” quote stage, but it looks like Clinton went there for Epsteins 50th birthday party. He is on the flight logs.
Remember that Epsteins “operation” supposedly worked by blackmail, so many people could have been invited and not taken the bait. If they went multiple times however … like Trump.
The Attorney general under Biden, Merrick Garland, is a by the book liberal conservative. He assumed the treasonous actions of January 6 2021 would sink trump’s political career. He also believed - correctly- that the attorney general is appointed by a president to lead the judicial branch independent of the executive branch. Merrick focused the AG office on the January 6th investigation and didn’t publish the Epstein documents as they weren’t part of any specific case.
There is also the theory that high ranking establishment Democrats are on the Epstein list. We also know that there are many pictures of epstein’s clients with underage girls that haven’t been published. Likely because American legal culture always seeks to punish the women involved in sex work and views the “johns” as victims who need to be protected
It makes their opponents look bad when they refuse
They were sealed by court order until January 2025.
Or you know, mindless nonsensical conspiracy theories.
I was under the impression that the president was above the law
Shhh! Don’t ruin it for the rest of us! On tomorrow’s episode of “As The Empire Crumbles”, will the files lead to anything actionable?
Biden likely would have never released it because his donors are on the list, also the general public on the US, if you haven’t caught on yet are like 30% complete idiots. A good example of this is that many people in comments on Instagram or other social media have said ‘‘why would anyone even willingly fly on a plane called ‘the Lolita express’?’’ Because they can’t figure out that the press started calling Epstine’s plane that long after the accusations and convictions were over with. They’re even more confused that the pilot of the plant never saw ANY sexual behavior or implied sexual relationship of any minors on the plane or even adults on the plane. How couldn’t he tell?! Because Epstine was a blackmail con man, not a ‘‘hay everybody here’s all my dirty secrets! Look at this! It’s incriminating!’’ Man. Blackmail necessitates obfuscation, and likewise gaining access to wealthy targets ment he ALSO needs to appear harmless and well connected to other wealthy people, who only saw normal behavior. So this list, the flight logs, even the island visitors, will all be at the very least 50% innocent people, if not way higher numbers. You only need a few successful targets to get by with blackmail and if the targets all have lots of money and know eachother the last thing you want is for them to be aware your blackmailing them all at once. And if he never did blackmail and just ran a pedophile ring, the level of secrecy would still be crazy high and he’d still want to look innocent to the majority of people he knew that’s how all child abusers and rapists in general tend to behave.
Biden wasn’t able to release it because a judge sealed it as part on an ongoing investigation. Don’t let that stop your ridiculous conspiracy theories.
The same “donors” would likely also support the Democrats now voting to release them.
30% feels generously low.
I’d say the people making shit up and are unaware of the files being sealed are the ACTUAL idiots.
… ok.
Its a PR stunt. The democratic establishment doesn’t want them released. The democrats that do, are the minority faction of progressives, and they don’t have enough political power to actually get them released. Biden is not a progressive, he wants the uphold the status quo, including, protecting the Democrats on that list.
That makes no fucking sense whatsoever. Why would they overwhelmingly vote to realease them then?
It’s all performative. You vote for something you know has zero chance of passing so you can go “Look! Look! I’m good! I did the thing!” in the next election cycle even if what you really did is nothing.
See the 50+ votes to repeal Obamacare.
I’ll ask you this: Why didn’t the Biden Administration release it? Why did most congressional Democrats not demand the Biden Administration to release it? They had 4 years. Why demand its release now, now that they are out of power and they know that the current admin will never release it.
Because your feelings, right?