Speaker Mike Johnson said he voted for the Jeffrey Epstein disclosure bill Tuesday based on his hope that the Senate would make changes he’s been demanding. Senate Majority Leader John Thune shot that down.
Thune said Tuesday evening that, while he had talked with the speaker about the bill, he and Senate GOP legal counsel decided the legislation was “sufficient.” The Senate effectively approved the legislation by unanimous consent mere hours after House passage Tuesday afternoon without provisions sought by Johnson, including additional victim and whistleblower name protections.
“I talked with the speaker a bit, and we’ve been in consultation obviously with the White House on this for some time,” Thune told reporters. “The conclusion was when it came out of the House 427-1 that, you know, it was going to pass in the Senate.”
Thune’s refusal to amend the bill was just the latest setback Johnson has faced in the Epstein saga, where the Louisiana Republican saw a rank-and-file member of his own party, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), pull off a stunning legislative end-run despite the speaker’s months-long opposition campaign.
Johnson said after House passage Tuesday that he would “insist upon” changes.
“I talked to John Thune over the weekend. I just texted him. We’re going to get together. We’ll talk about this,” Johnson told reporters as he left the floor. “There’s an easy way to amend the legislation to make sure that we don’t do permanent damage to the justice system. And I’m going to insist upon that.”
Asked if he would press Trump to veto the bill if the Senate didn’t amend it, Johnson said he would “cross that bridge” if necessary. He also raised “national security” concerns about the bill Tuesday.
Thune said Senate Republican lawyers examined the legislation and determined it could go forward without being amended.
“Our lawyers obviously had looked closely at some of the issues and had concluded that the bill I think was, you know, sufficient to accomplish what needed to be done here, and that is to get the information out there as quickly as possible,” Thune said.
Earlier this week, Johnson told reporters he had received “some comfort” from the Senate that the chamber would make the changes. But Thune never publicly indicated he expected the Senate to revise the bill and even warned earlier Tuesday that changes were unlikely.
The only short-lived whiff of resistance that appeared in the Senate Tuesday came from Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), who appeared to raise concerns at the last minute but did not block the effort.
“We were trying to see if we needed to change language to protect the victims,” Mullin said to reporters.
Shortly before Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer sought unanimous consent to greenlight the bill, Mullin said that there had been a “conversation” with the administration about what the Oklahoma Republican characterized as “technical changes,” which ultimately didn’t get made.
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