Rep. Thomas Massie’s discharge petition for a second Epstein files law reached 218 signatures on Wednesday, which forces a House vote on H.R. 9694, a bill that lets victims, state prosecutors and members of Congress sue the attorney general to enforce the first one.
- All 214 Democrats and four Republicans, Massie, Nancy Mace, Ralph Norman and Brian Fitzpatrick, signed.
- Floor action can come no earlier than after the Thanksgiving recess, possibly Dec. 2 or 3.
- The 2025 law set a 30-day deadline that fell on Dec. 19 and contains no enforcement clause: we read all of it, and it has two operative sections, one ordering the release and one ordering a report to Congress.
- The Justice Department said it identified more than 6 million potentially covered pages, produced nearly 3.5 million and says it has complied. Massie says it still withholds more than 3 million files.
You have probably seen this bill described as one that lets victims and state attorneys general sue the Justice Department, and that is accurate as far as it goes. We read the introduced text from the Government Publishing Office, and it does more than the summaries say, in a few places in directions its sponsors will want to look at before the floor vote. The clearest is a cross-reference: new section 4(d) guarantees state prosecutors access to “classified records described in section 2(a),” and section 2(a) of the 2025 law covers “all unclassified records.” The reason the bill exists is simple. The first law, which passed the House 427-1 and was signed on Nov. 19, 2025, had a deadline and no remedy, and a month after that deadline the department had posted about 125,575 pages of the millions it was holding. A law nobody can enforce is a request. We covered the plan for a second law when it was introduced, and the question it answers is who gets to ask a judge to decide.
What the Text Does That the Summaries Skip
Start with who gets into court. Section 4 says a state, its residents or a law enforcement agency “shall be considered to have been harmed” if they experienced “investigative harm, harassment, inability to corroborate reports to law enforcement, inability to obtain a victim statement, informational injury, financial harm in excess of $100, or any other harm” from the attorney general’s noncompliance. That is Congress defining standing by statute, and in TransUnion v. Ramirez in 2021 the Supreme Court said that “under Article III, an injury in law is not an injury in fact.” Courts have accepted informational injuries under some disclosure laws, which helps, but a $100 line is the kind of sentence a Justice Department lawyer reads aloud in the first motion to dismiss.
Then the classified-records language, where the bill appears to disagree with itself. It strikes subparagraph (E) of section 2(c)(1), the 2025 law’s permitted withholding for properly classified information. It leaves paragraph (3), which still tells the attorney general what to do with covered information that “would otherwise be redacted or withheld as classified information under this section.” And new section 4(d) promises state prosecutors “full, unredacted review” of those classified records. Read literally, the bill points at a category the underlying law defines out. We think the intent is plain, access to classified Epstein material for state investigators, and a court should not have to guess at it. A discharge petition skips the committee markup where staff would normally catch a cross-reference like that.
The provisions for members of Congress are the sharpest. Any member who writes to the attorney general gets “full, unredacted access” to covered records within seven calendar days, and a member who alleges a violation sets a 30-day clock: remedy it or send a written justification. If the member says the justification is “materially false, misleading, or otherwise fails to demonstrate compliance,” the bill gives that member a cause of action and lets a court say so. The same section ties department staff to existing criminal law, sections 1001, 1505, 1519 and 2071 of Title 18, with “the relevant mens rea requirements under those statutes” still required. It creates no new crime. What it adds is a line that compliance with the Act is “deemed a matter within the jurisdiction of a department or agency of the United States,” which is the hook a falsification charge under section 1519 needs.
On what the department can still hold back, the bill keeps the active-investigation exception, which the 2025 law limits to withholding that is “narrowly tailored and temporary,” and adds a flat ban on common-law privileges, including deliberative process, attorney-client, work product and law enforcement. It also changes “All redactions” to “Each redaction” before the requirement of a written justification, which closes off any reading in which one blanket explanation covers everything.
When is the vote?
The petition sits on the calendar for seven legislative days, then a signer can move to bring it up and the Speaker has two legislative days to act. With the Thanksgiving recess in between, ABC News puts floor action as early as Dec. 2 or 3.
Does it become law if the House passes it?
Not by itself. It needs the Senate and either the president’s signature or a two-thirds vote in both chambers to override a veto. Nothing about the second bill has been scheduled beyond the House vote.
Who can sue, and where?
State attorneys general, district attorneys and other authorized state officers, victims on their own behalf, and members of Congress after the written-request and 30-day steps. Suits go to the District of Columbia federal court or a district court in the plaintiff’s state, and the relief on offer is declaratory, injunctive and monetary, plus costs and attorney’s fees. Courts are told to expedite.
What does a victim get?
On request, the full unredacted records, FD-302 files included, that relate to the victim, the victim’s parents, siblings or guardians, or the harm suffered. Identifying information about other victims can still be redacted, and the bill’s definition leaves out anyone whose claim comes from their own participation in the conduct, unless they were themselves trafficked or abused.
What can the Justice Department still withhold?
Victim privacy information, child sexual abuse material, material that would jeopardize an active investigation if the withholding is narrowly tailored and temporary, and images of death, physical abuse or injury. The classified-information exception is struck, and common-law privileges are barred.
We think the Justice Department earned this bill. The 2025 law told it to publish everything within 30 days, it published a fraction, it later said it had complied, and nothing in the law itself gave anyone a way to ask a judge whether that was true. This bill supplies the way. The drafting problems above are fixable, and they should be fixed before it reaches the president, because the department’s first answer to any ambiguity will be to litigate it. Keep the clocks. Fix the cross-reference.
The vote is weeks away. The department has had a year.