On the one-year anniversary of their Epstein Files Transparency Act, Congressmen Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie sat down with Breaking Points to announce a follow-up bill and respond directly to Vice President JD Vance’s appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, where Vance dismissed the notion that the White House had any reluctance to release the Epstein files.
The new legislation builds on the original act, which resulted in the release of 3 million documents. Key provisions would require the U.S. Attorney General to cooperate with state attorneys general seeking to prosecute Epstein co-conspirators, with particular focus on New Mexico, where Epstein’s Zorro Ranch was located.
The bill also grants survivors standing in federal court to sue the Attorney General for access to their own FBI testimony files and removes the Justice Department’s ability to invoke deliberative process privilege to withhold documents.
Vance told Rogan it was “nonsense” that Trump was pressured into signing the original act, saying the idea that Trump “could not have k*lled that legislation, especially with the United States Senate, is a joke.”
Khanna was not impressed.
“When the history of the Trump administration is written, what Massie and I did will be seen as the most decisive blow to Trump that began the unraveling of his presidency,” he said. “Trump tried everything from including intimidating Thomas’s colleagues, Lauren Boebert, and Nancy Mace, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Some of them he brought into the situation room to get them not to support this.”
Massie backed that account and offered a telling detail.
“I asked to be invited to the bill signing. I think I’m the first congressman who’s ever got a bill passed that wasn’t invited to the bill signing,” he said. “They did it in secret, in a room with no cameras. You never see that happen.”
He also noted that the White House legislative affairs director was personally seen lobbying members on Capitol Hill to pull their names from the discharge petition.
Massie further questioned Vance’s claim of having reviewed most of the released documents. “I’ve spent hours at the DOJ and I’ve been barely just like scratching the surface,” he said. “The 3 million files is hard to consume and then to connect all the dots.”
He also pressed why, if 6 million files were collected as Vance claimed, only half have been released.
On Vance’s separate JRE comment that Epstein had connections to both U.S. and Israeli intelligence, Khanna pushed back on the Vice President’s framing.
“He’s not a pundit. He’s the sitting vice president. He could release the remaining files. He could declassify the documents and explain to the American public what exactly happened with Epstein,” he said.
Massie added that reviewing the files had shifted his own perspective, pointing to an audio recording of Epstein speaking with former Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak as a turning point.
“That’s when I decided he probably didn’t k*ll himself,” Massie said.
