President Donald Trump is reportedly putting pressure on MAGA rebels who bucked the White House’s wishes and backed the effort to force a vote to release the Jeffrey Epstein files in Congress.
Trump called GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert personally on Tuesday regarding her support for the Epstein discharge petition, according to The New York Times.
Boebert is one of the four Republicans who joined House Democrats to sign the discharge petition along with Reps. Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie, who introduced the petition.
Boebert also attended a White House meeting on the Epstein files on Wednesday, as confirmed by the White House.
That meeting was also attended by Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, according to CNN, but Boebert is not expected to remove her name, despite her visit to the White House.
Asked about the meeting to put pressure on Boebert in her daily press briefing, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt argued the meeting with the Colorado congresswoman shows how transparent the administration is for its willingness to brief members of Congress when they like.
However, the president has also been attempting to pressure others. The Times reported that the president has also been playing phone tag with Mace.
A spokesperson for Mace confirmed to Daily Beast that she does not plan to remove her signature.
Another rebel, Marjorie Taylor Greene, has also said she will not reverse course after backing the attempt to release the files.
Trump’s last-ditch efforts come ahead of Democratic Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva being sworn into office on Wednesday afternoon.
Grijalva is set to provide the final 218th signature necessary to force a vote to release the files in the House despite the wishes of GOP leadership.
Critics of the president have questioned why Trump is so desperate to prevent the release of all the files if he has nothing to hide. At the same time, Democrats have accused the administration of engaging in a cover-up after Trump and allies previously claimed they would release the documents.
Once the discharge petition receives the required number of signatures, it ripens for seven legislative days before House Speaker Mike Johnson has two legislative days to hold a vote.
Based on the current House calendar, the vote will likely happen in early December after the Thanksgiving recess.
Despite lawmakers being on the cusp of forcing a vote in the House to release all the Epstein documents, Senate Republican leaders have not committed to holding a vote in the Senate, even if it passes.
The escalating scrutiny over the Epstein files comes as new bombshell emails released by the House Oversight Committee Democrats show the convicted sex offender wrote that Trump, who has long been one of his associates, knew about the girls and even spent hours with one of the victims, Virginia Guiffre.
The White House and Trump’s Republican backers in Congress have accused Democrats of cherry-picking what they release from the files to create a false narrative. They’ve argued the emails do not provide any new information as the Trump administration has repeatedly denied that the president engaged in any criminal activity.
Trump took his frustration to social media on Wednesday afternoon, writing: “The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects. Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap.”
