Rep. Ro Khanna, a progressive Democrat from Silicon Valley who has played a leading role in the brawl in Congress over the Epstein files, notched a major win Tuesday after a months-long campaign.
Congress rapidly passed his bill forcing the U.S. Department of Justice to release all documentation of investigations into Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced sex offender and financier who died in jail six years ago. President Donald Trump, who vehemently opposed releasing the files for months, has said he will sign it.
“It’s a historic day for survivors,” Khanna told Bay Area News Group on Tuesday, after the House passed the bill. “This is one of the most disgusting and offensive scandals in American history. Jeffery Epstein basically had a rape island for rich and powerful men who raped and abused young girls with impunity. This entire ‘Epstein class’ needs to go.”
A self-described populist with progressive bona fides, Khanna represents Fremont and a swath of Silicon Valley. He sponsored the bill and helped convince enough Republicans to buck Trump and force a vote on that legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Khanna teamed up with an unlikely ally, rogue GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, and several far-right Republicans, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. They encountered fierce resistance from Trump and Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who said releasing the files would victimize women that survived Epstein’s abuse. When it appeared that enough Republicans were poised to pass the bill, Trump reversed course and pledged to sign it.
Democratic officials said the bill’s passage is a major victory for the party, which has struggled to find its voice after Trump’s victory last year.
“It’s a very masterful setting up of a challenge to Trump,” said Bill James, chair of the Santa Clara County Democratic Party. “And it shows that Trump is not invincible.”
It’s also a win for Khanna. An ambitious politician who co-chaired Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ run for president in 2020 and travels routinely to Republican-controlled districts, the congressman is pitching his vision of an American manufacturing renaissance backed by a strong social safety net. The success on Tuesday will likely raise his profile as he telegraphs interest in running for president in 2028.
“Khanna is getting a boost in his embryonic presidential campaign,” said Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College who has studied Congress. “He saw an opportunity that others missed.”
In seizing on Epstein and his many connections to the wealthy and well-connected — including Trump himself — Khanna managed to drive a wedge between the President and far-right members of his base hungry for disclosures on conspiratorial topics.
Before taking office, several powerful Trump administration officials stoked allegations and conspiracies about Epstein, and Trump pledged to release government files on the campaign trail in 2024. Pressure on the president intensified after Attorney General Pam Bondi announced this summer that Epstein’s “client list” was sitting on her desk, and then said no client list actually existed. Media reports and releases of documents by a Republican-controlled committee in the House have since detailed Trump’s links to Epstein. The president maintains that he cut ties with the disgraced financier before Epstein’s conviction for sex crimes in 2008, and last week, his administration started an investigation into other Epstein associates, including former Democratic President Bill Clinton.
Jan Soule, president of the Silicon Valley Association of Conservative Republicans, described Khanna’s focus on Epstein as a politically-motivated attempt to resist Trump. It’s a distraction from issues like car break-ins in her San Jose neighborhood, or the rise of “communism” in the political left, she said.
“Who the hell cares? Why people are making this big deal over it, I don’t know,” Soule said. “There’s a lot of bigger fish to fry than what’s going on with Epstein.”
Khanna said he’s urged the government to release its files about Epstein since 2019, when the convicted sex offender died in jail. His campaign wasn’t politically motivated, he said, because he doesn’t care if the files implicate Democrats or party donors.
In other interviews, Khanna said he decided to tackle the topic of Epstein after appearing on podcasts like “This Past Weekend” with Theo Von’s and traveling in deep-red territory. Supporters of Donald Trump, he discovered, had come to use Epstein’s name as a shorthand for government corruption and negligence.
“People say there’s a corrupt elite that’s shafting us,” Khanna said Tuesday. “There’s a group of people who are really abusing the system. And they have broken American values and abandoned us. And in that anger, they would often point to Epstein.”
James, the Santa Clara County Democratic Party chair, credited Khanna and his Republican colleague, Massie, for an unrelenting campaign that kept the issue top of mind for voters through a series of hurdles and crises.
In August, Johnson ended work in the House early for the summer recess when some GOP members joined the chorus of Democrats calling to “release the files.” In October, the longest shutdown in U.S. history began. And only last week, after the shutdown ended, Johnson swore in a new Democratic representative from Arizona who held the final vote to force consideration of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Khanna said that Trump could release the government’s files on Epstein on his own, without an act of Congress, if he wanted to. But his bill that passed on Tuesday would force rank-and-file staffers at the Department of Justice to ensure that they comply with the requirements to release files — or risk being legally found in contempt, or obstructing the law, he said.
“This is not just Donald Trump’s promise,” Khanna said. “This is the law of the land.”
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