How did the Epstein Files Transparency Act happen?

Today we talk about the myriad procedures involved in getting the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed in record time. How do discharge petitions work? What did HR 581 do exactly? How did it get through the Senate so quickly? And while we're at it, why did it take a record seven weeks to swear in a new representative? Here is the discharge petition signed by 218 members of Congress. Here is the full text of HR 581, passed by the House on 11/17. And finally, here is HR 4405, related to HR 185, which was brought to the floor by HR 581. CLICK HERE: Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more! To see Civics 101 in book form, check out A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro. Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast, Outside/In - we think you'll love it! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Schoolmakers will hold a vote tomorrow on legislation to force the release of the Epstein files and in a stunning change of his earlier position, President Trump is now supporting the move.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  But over the last several months, the president has repeatedly tried to stop this vote from happening. Speaker Johnson sending the House on August recess early and keeping them out for weeks during the shutdown, which in turn stalled the vote.

• 0:23Speaker 02

  ... of stunning developments on Capitol Hill. The House voting overwhelmingly to release the Epstein files. And now the Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, says that since it has the president's support, he could hold a vote as soon as today.

• 0:37Nick Capodice?

  You're listening to Civics 101. I'm Nick Capodice.

• 0:44Hannah McCarthy?

  I'm Hannah McCarthy.

• 0:45Nick Capodice?

  And today we're doing a rather nuts and bolts civics explainer tied to everything going on with the government's actions related to Jeffrey Epstein and the Epstein files. We are not going into the contents of those files or any of that stuff. This is a purposefully removed exploration of how a bill became a law in less than a week. This episode is about things like discharge petitions, the legislative process, the DOJ, executive power, that sort of stuff. So where do you want to begin with this, Hannah?

• 1:17Hannah McCarthy?

  Can we just start with the "files"? When people refer to the Epstein files, what are they talking about?

• 1:25Nick Capodice?

  Jeffrey Epstein was the subject of two criminal investigations, one that started in 2005 and another in 2019. He was convicted, pleading guilty in the first investigation to two prostitution charges, and in the second investigation, evidence was found proving he was running a massive sex trafficking ring. He was charged with sex trafficking and conspiracy to traffic minors for sex. He died in his prison cell in August 2019. So these investigations amassed a staggering amount of evidence. We're talking emails, videos, texts, phone calls, flight logs, financial transactions, client lists, and interviews.

• 2:03Hannah McCarthy?

  And as many of us know, some of those files have been released, some have not. I just want to understand the timeline of it all.

• 2:11Nick Capodice?

  All right, I think I can do this. I think I can do it fast, and I'm going to stick to recent events. During President Trump's campaign in 2024, he said if he were elected, he would order the DOJ to release the files. Would you declassify the Epstein files?

• 2:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, I would.

• 2:30Nick Capodice?

  After his election in February 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, by the way, is the person who heads the Justice Department, Bondi said she had a client list and that the Epstein files were on her desk.

• 2:43Speaker 06

  The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients? Will that really happen?

• 2:49Speaker 02

  It's sitting on my desk right now to review. That's been a directive by President Trump.

• 2:55Nick Capodice?

  Attorney General Bondi then sent binders marked "Declassified: The Epstein Files, Phase 1" to powerful right-wing influencers, but those binders contained information that had already been made public. In May, the Attorney General informed President Trump that his name appeared multiple times in the files. But in July of 2025, the Department of Justice released a memo saying there was no client list and that, quote, "We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties," end quote, and that no more files would be released.

• 3:28Speaker 07

  The DOJ says it found no credible evidence that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals, concluding Epstein did not maintain a client list that he used to traffic underage girls. It's a striking reversal of a past statement by the head of the Justice Department, Attorney General Pam Bondi.

• 3:44Nick Capodice?

  Shortly thereafter, President Trump posted on Truth Social that the Epstein files were a hoax, a hoax that was completely fabricated by the Democratic Party, that, quote, "Their new scam is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein hoax," end quote. After that, The Wall Street Journal published a birthday letter from Donald Trump to Epstein.

• 4:03Speaker 06

  The letter bearing Trump's name, which was reviewed by The Journal, is body, like others in the album. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker.

• 4:15Nick Capodice?

  Which the president denied writing and for which he sued the newspaper for $10 billion. The Wall Street Journal has moved to dismiss this lawsuit and it has not proceeded since then. In September this year, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson claimed that President Trump was an FBI informant against Epstein.

• 4:35Speaker 06

  It's been misrepresented. He's not saying that... Epstein did is a hoax. It's a terrible, unspeakable evil. He believes that himself. When he first heard the rumor, he kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago. He was an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down.

• 4:51Nick Capodice?

  Then a week later, he claimed he had misspoken.

• 4:53Speaker 06

  I don't know if I used the right word. I said FBI informant. I'm not sure. I wasn't there. This is in my lane. I'm just repeating what is common knowledge and has been out in the public for a long time.

• 5:01Nick Capodice?

  September 2nd, Republican Member of Congress Thomas Massey moved at the House votes to release the Epstein files through a discharge petition, which I'm going to talk about at length today. The government shuts down for 43 days, the longest shutdown ever. It reopens, and that is how we get to last week, November 18th, 2025.

• 5:19Hannah McCarthy?

  Very nice timeline there.

• 5:21Nick Capodice?

  Thank you.

• 5:22Hannah McCarthy?

  We have episodes explaining a shutdown. We have an episode on how a bill really becomes a law, but we've never actually gone too in depth on discharge petitions, what they are, how they work.

• 5:37Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, I think this is the first one of these to make the headlines in quite a long time, Hannah. So just kind of quickly, run me through the legislative process.

• 5:47Hannah McCarthy?

  All right, that I got. A member of the House or the Senate introduces a bill. If it is a money bill, it's got to start in the House. They hold the power of the purse. So they put that in the hopper, and depending on which chamber it originates in, it is assigned to a specific committee by either the Speaker of the House or the President pro tempore of the Senate. That committee explores the bill, sends it to subcommittees, debates it, changes it through the markup process, and...

• 6:14Nick Capodice?

  And...

• 6:15Hannah McCarthy?

  And that's usually it. The vast, vast majority of bills die in committee, as in they are not brought to the floor for a vote before Congress adjourns, which means they'll have to start again from scratch the next session.

• 6:28Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, and this Congress, the 119th, is no exception. So far, about 11,000 bills have been proposed in Congress, and of those, 37 were signed into law by the President.

• 6:41Hannah McCarthy?

  And aside from H.R. 1, also called the Big Beautiful Bill Act and the bill signed yesterday, I have not heard much about the 37 others.

• 6:51Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, 16 of those 37 are joint resolutions disapproving former legislation, which basically means that a rule that had been passed by a previous Congress no longer has any effect. But anyways, the point I'm making here, everybody, is that it is very hard to get a bill signed into law. And the first big obstacle is committee. That's where most of them die. Second obstacle, getting it on the calendar. Now, the party that controls the House decides when and if to vote on bills that are reported out. Those are bills that make it out of committee. There's a Rules Committee that chooses how it's going to be debated, how long everyone has to debate it, etc. And then, if a bill gets more than 50% in favor, that bill is passed in the House.

• 7:35Nick Capodice?

  Most of the time, though, most of the time, the House opts to vote, quote, "on suspension of the rules." That means there's going to be 40 minutes exactly to talk about the bill, and there are no other rules. But this kind of a vote requires a 2/3 majority, not just a simple majority, of the House.

• 7:53Speaker 06

  Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass H.R. 4459.

• 7:57Nick Capodice?

  The clerk will report the title of the bill. But Hannah, let's say there is a bill languishing in committee. It's just going to be another statistic for us to say in an episode one day. And a large cohort of the House does not want it to die there. They want that thing out.

• 8:14Hannah McCarthy?

  And this is where we get the discharge petition.

• 8:17Nick Capodice?

  This is it. A discharge petition takes a bill that has been proposed at least 30 days ago and forces it on the floor for a vote.

• 8:26Hannah McCarthy?

  Now, is this really rare?

• 8:28Nick Capodice?

  Super rare. There have been 671 attempted discharge petitions in US history, and only seven have been signed into law.

• 8:38Hannah McCarthy?

  Why is that exactly? I would imagine that many politicians get frustrated when their bills don't get reported out of committee. So why don't we hear about discharge petitions more often?

• 8:48Nick Capodice?

  Well, they take a lot of work, Hannah. For starters, it is a literal petition. It's a piece of paper that needs to be signed. 218 members of the House have to literally write their signature on that paper and say, "I am asking this bill be voted upon." And that's public information. Anyone can pressure anyone else when this petition is going around. They can say, "Hey, don't put your name on this, or I'm going to kick you off the Appropriations Committee and bust you down to the Printing Committee."

• 9:17Hannah McCarthy?

  How did the petition process go with this particular bill? The one to release the Epstein files?

• 9:23Nick Capodice?

  It was tangled, Hannah. It was a mess. Republican Congressman Thomas Massey introduced this petition, the name of which is House Resolution 581. I have a link to the resolution down in the show notes, by the way, if anyone wants to take a peek. I encourage you to do so.

• 9:39Hannah McCarthy?

  All right. I just want to make sure I have this right. The discharge petition brings a bill out of committee that has been submitted in the past, correct?

• 9:46Nick Capodice?

  Correct.

• 9:47Hannah McCarthy?

  So there was a proposed bill in committee that was mandating the release of the Epstein files.

• 9:54Nick Capodice?

  Uh, kinda. And here's where a lot of procedural things happen that are beyond the 101. The bill being dragged out by Petition 581 is H.R. 185, which is easy and convenient because it is the reverse of 581. Anyways, this bill is called the Responsible Legislating Act. It's a very long bill, Hannah. 85 pages. It is about myriad procedures, and the name Epstein is not mentioned once.

• 10:24Hannah McCarthy?

  What committee was it in?

• 10:26Nick Capodice?

  Uh, well, it was sitting. Where was it sitting? The last action on this bill was in March. It had been referred to the Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry.

• 10:39Hannah McCarthy?

  Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry. What am I missing here?

• 10:43Nick Capodice?

  581 drags out H.R. 185. Now, H.R. 185... Has a related bill, HR 4405. This is the one that Representative Ro Khanna introduced in July, which is an Epstein transparency bill. So the discharge petition says, we're going to bring HR 185 to the floor for a vote, but strike everything in it besides what's in the related bill, HR 4405. And yes, HR 4405 is the actual bill that moved through the legislative process after that.

• 11:20Hannah McCarthy?

  So HR 581 passed on Tuesday, November 17th, meaning HR 4405 passed and began its journey towards the president's desk. But I don't want to skip over the petition signing. Getting those 218 signatures is a Herculean task.

• 11:40Nick Capodice?

  You are absolutely right, Hannah. It was a Donnybrook, and I'm going to tell you about that as well as the next steps after a quick break.

• 11:51Speaker 06

  Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionist History, we're going back to the spring of 1988, to a town in northwest Alabama, where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control. There was this joke that said that it was easier to get forgiveness in the Church of Christ for murdering somebody than it was to be divorced. From Revisionist History, this is The Alabama Murders. Listen to Revisionist History: The Alabama Murders wherever you get your podcasts.

• 12:21Nick Capodice?

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• 13:06Nick Capodice?

  You can even track the progress on a dashboard. And for our listeners, we have an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan. Just go to incogni.com/civics or use the code civics at checkout. There's a link in the episode description. Remember, they can't harm you if they can't find you.

• 13:27Nick Capodice?

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• 14:11Nick Capodice?

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• 14:32Hannah McCarthy?

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• 15:47Nick Capodice?

  We're back and we are talking about the procedural system surrounding the release of the Epstein files.

• 15:53Hannah McCarthy?

  All right, Nick, so tell me about the path to 218 signatures on the discharge petition. How did that happen?

• 15:59Nick Capodice?

  All right. And by the way, anyone out there, you can see the signatures on the petition. It is at the official website of the House Clerk. I'll put a link to that in the show notes, too. Four members of the Republican Party signed this petition on September 2nd. Thomas Massey, who co-sponsored the bill, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Nancy Mace. In the next few days, every member of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives signed it, bringing that number to 217. And the final signature would not come for a long time.

• 16:30Speaker 06

  Well, voters in CD7 have spoken, and tonight it appears that Adalita Grijalva will head to Washington to fill the seat held for so many years by her late father, Raoul Grijalva.

• 16:42Nick Capodice?

  Adalita Grijalva won a special election in Arizona, filling the seat that had been occupied by her father, Raoul Grijalva, who passed away in March.

• 16:52Hannah McCarthy?

  And when was the special election?

• 16:54Nick Capodice?

  September 23rd.

• 16:55Hannah McCarthy?

  And when was she sworn into Congress?

• 16:57Nick Capodice?

  She was sworn in on November 12th, seven weeks later.

• 17:01Hannah McCarthy?

  And the swearing in of a new representative is determined by the Speaker of the House.

• 17:05Nick Capodice?

  Yeah.

• 17:06Hannah McCarthy?

  What you're saying is that Speaker Mike Johnson of the House delayed Grijalva's swearing in for seven weeks.

• 17:13Nick Capodice?

  That's right, and he gave several reasons for this. This was a record delay, 50 days. The previous record was 35 days in 2017. California Democratic Representative Jimmy Gomez cited family issues as the reason for his self-imposed delay, and he was lambasted by Republicans who claimed that he was trying to push through state legislation before taking his federal seat. Then Speaker Kevin McCarthy said his delay, quote, "is an abdication to participate in representative democracy," end quote. So here are the given reasons for Grijalva's delay. Although Grijalva won a victory with a 2 to 1 margin, Speaker Johnson said he wanted to wait until the election results were certified.

• 17:57Nick Capodice?

  Worth mentioning here, he did not do that for three other representatives who were sworn in the day after their special elections. Johnson then said that the swearing in couldn't happen until the House was back from recess, again contradicting precedent he had set in this 119th Congress. Johnson then extended the recess by another week, scheduling the swearing in of Grijalva for October 7th, and then he delayed that by declaring a district work session.

• 18:25Hannah McCarthy?

  As in, everyone in the House has to go back to their states and work on their local issues.

• 18:30Nick Capodice?

  Exactly. And so then Grijalva was scheduled for October 14th, and then it was delayed one more time, and then Johnson announced that the House would not meet during the government shutdown. So finally, on November 12th, he swore Adalida Grijalva in.

• 18:47Speaker 06

  Will Representative-elect Grijalva and members of the Arizona delegation present themselves in the well? And all members will rise.

• 18:58Speaker 06

  And the representative-elect will raise her right hand.

• 19:02Nick Capodice?

  And she signed the petition that day.

• 19:05Hannah McCarthy?

  Now, once you sign a petition, can you take your name off of that petition?

• 19:09Nick Capodice?

  Interesting. Yes, you can during the signing process, but once it reaches that 218 signatures threshold, it is frozen. You cannot take your name off it. And this is important because before the threshold was reached, Representatives Boebert, Mason, Taylor Greene, all received direct communications from the White House about removing their names from the petition. And to mention Lauren Boebert in particular, she was summoned to an emergency meeting in the Situation Room at the White House. And this meeting was confirmed by the Press Secretary.

• 19:42Hannah McCarthy?

  But nobody took their names off of the petition. And it was put on the calendar for a vote on Tuesday, November 18th. And it's pretty much a sure bet to pass at that point, isn't it? 218 is a majority. And a majority is what is required to approve a bill and send it to the Senate.

• 19:58Nick Capodice?

  Correct. And things moved very quickly after this. Over the weekend before the vote, President Trump reversed his stance on the bill, asking for every single Republican in the House to vote for it. It was voted for under suspension of the rules, only 40 minutes of debate.

• 20:13Hannah McCarthy?

  Now, this is when the presiding officer manages the clock. And there's a lot of yielding of time to other members so that they can get up and say their piece.

• 20:21Speaker 07

  The gentleman reserves, the gentleman from Ohio is recognized.

• 20:24Speaker 05

  We on our side want justice to prevail. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining?

• 20:30Speaker 00

  I yield myself three and a half minutes. Speaker, I yield a minute and a half to the distinguished gentleman.

• 20:32Speaker 06

  The gentleman has five and a half minutes remaining.

• 20:34Speaker 05

  What I see is a group more focused on scoring political points and drama.

• 20:38Speaker 00

  They've said that it doesn't protect victims. Well, if that is so, why were dozens of victims with us today at a press conference urging this body to pass this legislation?

• 20:48Speaker 05

  Jeffrey Epstein.

• 20:53Nick Capodice?

  And these are moments for House reps to get their face and their thoughts on camera for a few shining minutes. Very little was said about policy and procedure. It was just reiteration of points that the parties have made for the last few months. With one notable exception, Speaker Mike Johnson made it very clear he wanted the bill to be amended in the Senate.

• 21:14Speaker 07

  And there are serious deficiencies in the legislation that I have noted at length. And Republicans have to work to address those deficiencies in the Senate if and when.

• 21:22Hannah McCarthy?

  And if a bill is amended in the Senate and passes, that means it has to go back to the House and be voted on again.

• 21:32Nick Capodice?

  Exactly, and it can bounce back and forth between the chambers for a long time. But the House vote passed 426 to 1. Louisiana Representative Clay Higgins was the only nay vote citing potential harm to the survivors of Epstein's crimes if the files were released.

• 21:47Hannah McCarthy?

  And then it went to the Senate where, because it was not an appropriations bill, it required 60 votes to not be subject to the filibuster.

• 21:56Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, but something pretty strange happened, Hannah. This is something even more rare than the discharge petition. Do you know what a deem and pass provision is?

• 22:07Hannah McCarthy?

  No.

• 22:08Nick Capodice?

  So this happens sometimes in the House of Representatives. It's also called a self-executing rule. This is where legislators put a provision in the bill that if the rules for debate on the bill are agreed upon, the bill just passes.

• 22:23Hannah McCarthy?

  Really?

• 22:24Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, I can't, I can't get into it today. It's very complicated. Its constitutionality is debated, and it's not really what happened here, but it rhymes with this. So as soon as the bill passed in the House, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer proposed a deem and pass resolution, which 100% of the Senate agreed to, that as soon as the bill came to the Senate, it would instantly pass.

• 22:50Hannah McCarthy?

  So no vote, and, you know, no amendments, no debate whatsoever?

• 22:55Nick Capodice?

  None whatsoever.

• 22:56Hannah McCarthy?

  They agreed in advance to say yes.

• 23:00Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, it's like it wasn't even there. It's like the bill had a 10-minute layover at Dulles.

• 23:04Speaker 07

  The bill to release the Epstein files has passed by unanimous consent in the United States Senate and now heads to Donald Trump's desk. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer made the request to pass the bill.

• 23:16Hannah McCarthy?

  By consent, and it did. Was Speaker Johnson frustrated that it was not amended?

• 23:21Nick Capodice?

  He certainly was, and he was quite vocal about it.

• 23:23Hannah McCarthy?

  Any reaction to Leader Thune, you seeing the bill without adding amendments or changing it?

• 23:28Speaker 06

  I am deeply disappointed in this outcome. I think I've been at the state dinner. I don't know. I was just told that Chuck Schumer rushed it to the floor and put it out there preemptively. It needed amendments. I just spoke to the president about that. We'll see what happens.

• 23:44Hannah McCarthy?

  So, do you think he may be? All right, so this passes the House. It passes the Senate. Next step is that it goes to the president for a signature. And the president has 10 days to sign it, right?

• 23:55Nick Capodice?

  Yep, 10 days to sign it or veto it. A pocket veto can happen if Congress adjourns during that 10-day period. But again, with all expedience possible, President Trump announced on Truth Social that he signed the bill the night it came to his desk, November 19.

• 24:11Hannah McCarthy?

  And how long until the Department of Justice is required to release the files?

• 24:16Nick Capodice?

  30 days. So this can be expected on December 19.

• 24:21Hannah McCarthy?

  I do have one more question. The biggest criticism of this bill in the House debate was that these files had been in the possession of the former Biden administration for years. And the question was, why didn't he release them? Now, critics of the Trump administration have said, why doesn't Trump just release them himself without getting Congress involved? Because my understanding is that a president can indeed tell the DOJ to release files like this, right?

• 24:51Nick Capodice?

  Well, this is tricky. And I had to ask a policy expert on that specifically, and she said, well, this is tricky. She told me that this falls into our category, Hannah, of can a president do X, where the answer is redundant because the president does X regardless. President Trump has ordered the release of the files related to the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President John F. Kennedy. And a lot of that material was classified, and declassification requires a well-outlined, thorough process. But at the same time, President Trump has stated, quote, "There doesn't have to be a process as I understand it. If you're the President of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it's declassified, even by thinking about it."

• 25:39Nick Capodice?

  So that is pretty much all I've got today, Hannah. Do you have any questions left?

• 25:45Hannah McCarthy?

  None that I think can be answered by you right now. The only question I have left is whether or not the release of these files can be stalled due to ongoing investigation because on November 14th, the president ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate links between Epstein and members of the Democratic Party exclusively. So like the investigation would be just as pertains to members of the Democratic Party. And I would assume that there are things in the quote unquote Epstein files that would be used in that investigation.

• 26:19Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, you were right, Hannah. I do not have an answer to that, and I don't know what's gonna happen. I think we are all just gonna have to wait until December 19th to know for sure.

• 26:29Hannah McCarthy?

  All right.

• 26:30Nick Capodice?

  All right, everyone. Take care of yourselves, and we're gonna see you next week.

• 26:48Nick Capodice?

  This episode is made by me, Nick Capodice, with you, Hannah McCarthy. Thank you, Hannah.

• 26:52Hannah McCarthy?

  Thank you, Nick.

• 26:53Nick Capodice?

  Marina Henke is our producer and Rebecca Lavoy, our executive producer. Music in this episode from Epidemic Sound, Blue Dot Sessions, and the wondrous Chris Sabriski. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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