General Discussion

When asked by a reporter about working with someone who has been obstructing the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, Jeffries said that “the Trump administration and Mike Johnson are running a pedophile protection program.”

“That’s what they’ve been doing. And that’s the reason why they refuse to swear in Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, for weeks now,” Jeffries added, referring to the congresswoman who won a special election on September 23 to replace her late father, Representative Raúl Grijalva. “She was elected in late September decisively.”

Jeffries said that Grijalva hasn’t been sworn in by House Speaker Johnson because she would be the deciding vote on legislation requiring the Department of Justice to release the Epstein files.

“Week after week after week have gone by, and Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva is unable to serve 800,000 people in the state of Arizona all because of the pedophile protection program being run by Mike Johnson and House Republicans at the direction of their boss, Donald J. Trump,” Jeffries added.

With a vote on releasing files related to Jeffrey Epstein just days away, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said this weekend that it was clear President Donald Trump was “at the center of a child sex ring,” and that the president’s behavior over the past week made it clear that the files contained “something especially and specifically incriminating.”

“What we've already seen is immensely incriminating; clearly, Donald Trump was at the center of a child sex ring,” Murphy said, speaking over the weekend with The Bulwark Managing Editor Sam Stein during a panel. “That is heartbreaking that the president of the United States was involved in that kind of gross, craven immorality.”

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“He is in daily panic mode as we get closer to the moment where these files and the fullest truth that we have available to us is going to be made public, and it is clearly the biggest scandal in presidential history,” Murphy said.

“...It stands to reason that he wouldn't be fighting so hard to spin against this story, or bullying Republicans in the House to prevent the release of these files if there wasn't something especially and specifically incriminating in that information.”