The Epstein files explosion on Capitol Hill last week — headlined by emotional accounts from Jeffrey Epstein’s accusers — fueled speculation that more information could soon be public, with a discharge petition poised to gain enough signatures to force a vote on the matter.

But opposition from the Trump administration and political realities in the Senate could thwart that effort, putting pressure on a GOP leadership-endorsed investigation into the convicted sex offender and Ghislaine Maxwell in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The dynamics have laid the groundwork for an explosive fall as the issue accelerates back up to full throttle even in the face of aggressive efforts by President Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to put the scandal to bed — with Trump calling it the “Democrat Epstein Hoax.”

The debate will resume immediately this week, since an Oversight panel subpoena gave the Epstein estate a Monday deadline to deliver a host of documents that could shed light on the elite associations maintained by the disgraced financier, who died by suicide in 2019 in a jail cell where he was awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking. 

The list of records sought by the committee includes Epstein’s will, the travel logs for his private plane, anything resembling a client list, and a notorious “birthday book” assembled by Maxwell when Epstein turned 50 in 2003. That leather-bound volume reportedly contains a lewd note written by Trump when he was still a private citizen in New York, which the president has denied.

The Oversight panel is also promising to release more Epstein files obtained from the Department of Justice (DOJ). The panel had subpoenaed the agency in August for the “full, unredacted Epstein Files,” and last week it released more than 30,000 DOJ files related to the case. 

Still, the critics of the Oversight investigation say it’s incomplete, accusing GOP leaders of working with the White House to create the appearance of DOJ transparency while allowing agency leaders to withhold files they don’t want disclosed. A vast majority of the files released by the committee were already public, the critics charge, and even then, the aggressive redactions make them all but meaningless. 

“We don’t want to see the materials the White House is sending over. We want to see the materials the White House is not sending over,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. 

Democrats are unanimously supporting an alternative effort led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to use a procedural gambit known as a discharge petition to bypass GOP leadership and force a vote on their bill that directs the Department of Justice to release virtually all information relating to Epstein.

“The DOJ and government are implicated in this, too,” Massie said. “You can’t trust them. You can’t let them curate all of the evidence that implicates the DOJ and their best friends.”

Three more Republicans have joined that effort so far: Reps. Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), and Nancy Mace (S.C.). And even if no other Republicans join, that discharge petition is on track to reach the 218-signature threshold to force action as soon as two more Democrats are elected in special elections later this month.

That assumes, though, that Boebert, Greene, and Mace keep their names on the petition in the face of what some members describe as an aggressive White House campaign against the effort.

“Helping Thomas Massie and Liberal Democrats with their attention-seeking, while the DOJ is fully supporting a more comprehensive file release effort from the oversight committee, would be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration,” a White House official said last week.

Boebert said the morning after she signed the petition that no one had asked her to remove her name. Asked about signing the petition in wake of the White House characterization of it being a “hostile act,” Boebert said: “However we can get justice for the victims. I’m in favor for.”

Greene, meanwhile, said in an interview on Real America’s Voice last week that she got “phone call after phone call” urging her to not sign the discharge petition, calling the unnamed official who called the move a “hostile act” a “coward.”

Mace has made her personal story of surviving sexual assault central to her political identity, but is also courting Trump’s support as she runs for governor of South Carolina.

Massie, who clashes frequently with Trump, bashed the administration, saying the “hostile act” characterization amounts to nothing less than “a political threat.”

“I think it’s also an insult,” he added. “Why is the White House trying to bully women in Congress who are trying to protect women who are just regular people who haven’t been heard? That’s the question that needs to be asked.” 

Even if the discharge petition is successful, the underlying bill would have to clear many more hurdles. GOP leaders successfully swayed members to kill a push to allow proxy voting for new parents despite a successful discharge petition earlier this year. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said last week he has no plans to bring up an Epstein-related bill in his chamber, and the legislation would have to be signed by Trump — or overcome his veto — to have the force of law.

That means the Oversight probe, even as it is decried by Democrats for being insufficient, is perhaps the best shot Congress has of uncovering — and revealing — new information in the Epstein matter. Comer and Johnson have argued that the panel’s investigation is seeking more information than the Massie-Khanna petition. And it has some major depositions and inquiries on deck in addition to subpoenas of the DOJ and Epstein estate.

The Oversight panel is set to hold a transcribed interview on Sept. 19 with Alex Acosta, the former Labor Secretary in Trump’s first administration who resigned when Epstein’s 2019 arrest prompted new scrutiny of a 2008 plea deal Acosta negotiated with Epstein as U.S. attorney in Miami. The wealthy sex offender avoided federal charges and served 13 months in prison for state charges of soliciting minors for prostitution.

The panel has also subpoenaed a swath of former attorneys general and FBI directors, as well as former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The Clintons’ deposition dates are scheduled for mid-October.

Comer has requested that the Treasury Department turn over suspicious activity reports that were generated by banks related to activities by Epstein and Maxwell, which could provide new information and leads.

And he pledged to have the committee make its own “Epstein List,” if victims help to do so.

“We’re going to compile a list from the victims, so at the end of the day, there’s going to be a list,” Comer said on NewsNation last week. “We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that people know who was involved.”