Democrat Adelita Grijalva Finally Sworn In—Teeing Up Epstein Vote

Seven weeks after she won a special election in Arizona’s 7th congressional district, Adelita Grijalva was sworn in to the House of Representatives Wednesday, giving legislators the final vote needed to release all of the government’s files on Jeffrey Epstein.

House Speaker Mike Johnson set a record for how long he stalled on swearing in Grijalva, using the government shutdown as an excuse. Grijalva won a special election in September to fill the seat of Representative Raúl Grijalva, her father, who passed away in March after 22 years in Congress. She has vowed to be the deciding 218th vote on a petition that would automatically trigger a House floor vote on legislation demanding that the Justice Department release the Epstein files.

After being sworn in, Grijalva received a standing ovation from her colleagues and gave a speech on the House floor, saying she would “sign the discharge petition right now to release the Epstein files” to applause.

“Justice cannot wait another day,” Grijalva said.

Earlier this month, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries accused Johnson and the Trump administration of running a “pedophile protection program” by refusing to swear in Grijalva, a term he repeated Tuesday night as he said the GOP is “intentionally hiding the Jeffrey Epstein files.”

“But those days are over, because as soon as Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva becomes Congresswoman Grijalva, her first act ... is going to be to sign that discharge petition,” Jeffries said. “It’s going to force a vote on the House floor, and the American people are going to get the transparency that they deserve.”

This story has been updated.

In a newly released email, a person invited to a private meeting with Jeffrey Epstein joked that Donald Trump might be hanging around the convicted sex offender’s Paris apartment in 2017—years after the president claimed to have cut ties, and after he was already in the White House for the first time. 

Buried in a batch of thousands of documents released by the GOP-led House Committee on Oversight and Reform Wednesday, one email chain from December 2017 showed someone, whose name was redacted, coordinating a time and place to have a “more private” meeting with Epstein. 

In other documents released by the committee, the names of survivors of Epstein’s alleged abuse have been redacted, indicating that the email’s author may have been a victim of the convicted sex criminal. 

When the redacted individual arrived at Epstein’s apartment in Paris on December 8, they remarked that they hoped they weren’t overlapping with a visit from Trump.

“I m at the door but I will wait for my time.. i don’t want to come early to find Trump in your house,” the person wrote, adding two smiley-face emojis.  

Earlier in the email chain, Epstein had invited the person to come to his home. “You are welcome at my house always . And more private.”

The author, whoever they were, wasn’t actually in any danger of running into the president that day. On December 8, Trump was attending a rally in Pensacola, Florida, and the next day he was in Mississippi. While it’s possible that the author was referring to a different “Trump,” such as Eric or Donald Jr., the strange remark appears to refer to Epstein’s well-documented friendship with his neighbor in Palm Beach, or possibly some interaction all three of them had.

There are only two people who know exactly what this comment meant, and one of them is dead. The other, now rendered anonymous, was presumably interviewed by the FBI—and their testimony could be made public should Congress vote to release the government’s files on Epstein in full. 

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released their own batch of emails Wednesday, including one where Epstein claimed Trump “knew about the girls.” If this email is anything to go by, it appears that the girls may have known about him too. 

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the release of hundreds of immigrants detained in Chicago, amid the Trump administration’s reckless “Operation Midway Blitz.”

U.S District Judge Jeffrey Cummings said the government may have violated a consent decree against “warrantless arrests” because most of those who were arrested didn’t have a criminal record or deportation order. Cummings ordered those who do not pose a significant risk or have mandatory detention orders to be granted bond by November 21.

Cummings is giving the Department of Justice one week to produce a list of all immigrants that fall in that category out of the 615 arrested by federal agents. If the detainees don’t have a deportation order or criminal record, Cummings said he would release them on a $1,500 bond. He has also prohibited the government from trying to convince them to sign voluntary removal documents in the meantime.

Most were processed in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Bridgeview, a Chicago suburb, but others have been sent to detention centers across the country. A DOJ attorney, William Weiland, said that at least 12 of the detainees were a security risk, and asked the government to stay any releases to vet all of them. Cummings said that the government could have that time, ordering that government attorneys and the detainees’ counsel turn in a status report on November 21.

Still, Cummings’s decision is another rebuke to the Trump administration’s immigration efforts in the Chicago metro area, which have included conducting violent raids in the city’s neighborhoods, as well as using weapons such as tear gas against protesters.

If many of the immigrants detained by federal agents are eventually released, it will show that the Trump administration’s tactics were not just excessive but illegal. If that is the case, will any officials, whether they are low-level law enforcement or members of the administration, face any consequences?

Donald Trump is beginning to squirm under pressure as Congress pushes to release the Epstein files.

Trump ranted on Truth Social Wednesday about the bipartisan bid to make the case files public, claiming that the entire effort was a “hoax” to deflect from the government shutdown.

“Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap,” Trump posted. “The Democrats cost our Country $1.5 Trillion Dollars with their recent antics of viciously closing our Country, while at the same time putting many at risk—and they should pay a fair price.

“There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!” he continued.

In a separate post, Trump reiterated that he believed Democrats were “using the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax to try and deflect from their massive failures, in particular, their most recent one—THE SHUTDOWN!”

Congress is potentially hours away from voting on a discharge petition that would force a vote regarding the files’ release.

For months, just four Republicans had penned their signatures on the discharge petition. But in early November, concern swelled among GOP lawmakers that Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was even cozier than previously understood: A few conservative representatives with ties to the FBI and the Justice Department spilled last week that the true details of the Epstein files are “worse” for Trump than previously reported.

Apparently trying to unravel conservative support for the files’ release, Trump phoned his MAGA acolytes Tuesday in an unsuccessful attempt to get them to remove their signatures from the petition.

Files released by House Democrats early Wednesday shed even more light on the Trump-Epstein connection, illustrating that as late as 2011 Epstein was grateful Trump had stayed quiet about abuse that had taken place at one of the financier’s residences. The “dog that hasn’t barked is Trump,” Epstein wrote to his longtime girlfriend and criminal associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, at the time.

When queried by Michael Wolff in 2019 about the extent of Trump’s knowledge of abductions of young girls, Epstein remarked: “Of course he knew about the girls he asked Ghislaine to stop.”

The Trump administration is using the government shutdown as an excuse to avoid releasing the official jobs and inflation data for the second month in a row.

“The Democrats may have permanently damaged the federal statistical system with October [consumer price index] and jobs reports likely never being released. And all of that economic data released will be permanently impaired, leaving our policymakers at the Fed flying blind at a critical period,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced at a Wednesday press conference.

While the White House has previously hinted that the inflation report won’t be released due to the shutdown, there is less explanation for why the jobs report can’t be released.

The reality is that the economy is bad and Trump can’t hide the data—or blame it on Joe Biden—forever.

Private-sector data from payroll company ADP showed that the U.S. lost 32,000 jobs in September. In October, an estimated 11,000 jobs were lost per week. “The labor market struggled to produce jobs consistently during the second half of the month,” said ADP chief economist Nela Richardson.

Trump is planting the seeds to question any future jobs reports that do eventually come out because they will likely be abysmal. He already fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer in August when the agency reported that the economy created 258,000 fewer jobs in May and June than initially thought. Now, he’s insisting that a government shutdown (which most people blame him for) will permanently delete two months of jobs data because the numbers won’t be anywhere near where he wants them.