House Speaker Mike Johnson speaks about the Epstein files bill
Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act today by a margin so wide that President Trump will not be able to veto it. But opponents of the law have another plan to stop it, described in a little-noticed document circulated by House Speaker Mike Johnson.
“It jeopardizes future federal investigations, and we have national security concerns regarding classified information,” Johnson said of the bill.
He wasn’t speaking off the cuff. He was quoting from a document produced by his office detailing five “flaws” with the bill. The fifth and final flaw, titled “national security concerns,” says that it’s “incredibly unwise to demand that DOJ declassify materials originated by other agencies”; that “declassification should … protect sources and methods” and directs Congress to “work with the Attorney General [Pam Bondi] to declassify in a reasonable time frame.”
In other words, the Trump administration should have final say because, well, national security.
Full document104KB ∙ PDF fileDownloadDownload
This is exactly the kind of national security argument that I warned yesterday would be invoked to block disclosure the Justice Department and FBI’s massive holdings (300 Gigabytes according to them) regarding Jeffrey Epstein.
Below is a link to my article from yesterday explaining the plan to stonewall any release.
Subscribe if you like transparency
— Edited by William M. Arkin
From Ken Klippenstein via this RSS feed
You must log in or # to comment.