Ranking Member Raskin’s Floor Statement on Bipartisan Discharge Petition to Force Trump DOJ to Stop Withholding Full Epstein File
Washington, D.C. (November 18, 2025)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, delivered a floor statement in support of H.R. 4405, the bipartisan discharge petition led by Rep. Thomas Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna, which would force the Trump Administration to stop withholding the full Epstein File from the public:
WATCH Ranking Member Raskin’s statement.
Ranking Member Jamie Raskin
House Judiciary Committee
November 18, 2025
Today, four months and three days after Mr. Khanna and Mr. Massie introduced their discharge petition—perhaps the most famous discharge petition in American history—the People’s House unites across party lines to draw a moral line.
We draw a line against the rape and sexual violation of children. We draw a line against the global criminal trafficking of girls and young women to service the pleasure of rich and powerful men who believe they are beyond all law and all morality. We draw a line to put the voices of the victims and the survivors first.
We ask the Senate to join us without changes rather than obstruct this bill with dilatory amendments, legislative graffiti and self-dealing million-dollar jackpot provisions for lucky senators. Just pass the bill.
We are finally voting today because the bipartisan discharge petition led by Representatives Massie and Khanna and signed by 218 of us overthrew the determined obstruction of the Speaker. This forced vote means the House will no longer acquiesce in this astonishing real-time coverup of a multi-billion dollar global sex trafficking and child rape ring that has ravaged the lives of more than a thousand girls and young women.
We are here today because of these victims, these survivors, these citizens, these inspiring women who have come to Washington are demanding nothing less than justice and the complete truth about who is responsible for their vicious abuse, including those responsible for enabling it, ignoring, bank rolling it and covering it up.
We join them today in rejecting any more dangerous lies about the crimes they suffered. No, child sex abuse is not a hoax, it’s a crime. Human trafficking is not a hoax, it’s a crime. These crimes are a curse on young children and young people across America, in universities and elementary schools, in churches, mosques and synagogues, in boy scout troops and college sports teams and summer camps—anywhere the powerful and the rich believe they’ve got the opportunity and impunity to exploit the young, the poor, the powerless and the vulnerable.
We must face the truth and find the co-conspirators still at large in one of America’s most extensive and most sophisticated child sex trafficking and child abuse rings in history.
Release of the file will expose the role of everybody—everybody—who facilitated and covered up these crimes, like JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and Bank of New York Mellon, which executed billions of dollars in transactions related to these offenses, as well as any bank executives who participated in the sexual abuse of girls and young women.
We must expose everyone who covered up these crimes, like Alex Acosta, the former U.S. Attorney in Miami, Donald Trump’s Labor Secretary, who gave Jeffrey Epstein an unbelievable sweetheart plea deal, immunized unnamed co-conspirators, and killed an investigation into Epstein’s financial crimes that could have brought down Epstein’s entire criminal network.