House Petition Reaches 218 Signatures to Force a Vote on Epstein Files Transparency Act II

A discharge petition for the Epstein Files Transparency Act II reached 218 signatures on Wednesday, November 11, 2026, enough to force a vote in the House of Representatives. The petition, led by Rep. Thomas Massie, bypasses Speaker Mike Johnson and puts the bill on a path to the floor.

Massie announced the milestone on social media on the morning of November 11. "This morning we reached the required 218 signatures on my discharge petition for Epstein Files Transparency Act II!" he wrote, in a post reported by Newsmax.

How the count reached 218

Rep. John Garamendi of California supplied the 218th signature. A day earlier, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington had signed as the 217th. Before those two signatures, the count had sat at 216 since mid-September, the Wall Street Journal reported.

All 214 House Democrats signed the petition. Four Republicans signed as well: Massie, Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania. The Journal reported that none of the four Republicans returns to Congress next year, which makes the current count time sensitive for supporters of the bill.

A discharge petition is a House tool that lets a majority of members bring a bill to the floor without the speaker scheduling it. Reaching 218 signatures, a majority of the 435 member House, is the step that makes that move possible.

What the second act would change

The bill, Epstein Files Transparency Act II (H.R. 9694), was introduced on July 15, 2026 by Massie with Rep. Ro Khanna and Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez. The Senate companion bill, S. 5005, is led by Sen. Jeff Merkley and Sen. Ben Ray Lujan.

The new act would bar the Justice Department from withholding documents under common law privileges such as attorney-client privilege and deliberative process. The department said in January that it had withheld or redacted roughly 200,000 pages on such grounds, the Journal reported.

The bill would also let Epstein's victims, state prosecutors and members of Congress sue the Justice Department over records it is still holding back, Newsmax reported. That court route is a central difference from the first law, which set release duties but left privilege based withholding in place for the pages described above.

The first law and what was released

Congress passed the original Epstein Files Transparency Act in November 2025 over President Trump's initial objections, and he signed it on November 19, 2025. Under that law, the Justice Department released more than 3 million pages in January 2026, out of more than 6 million pages collected.

Supporters of the second act point to the withheld and redacted pages as the reason a follow up law is needed. Opponents of the petition route have not been quoted in the reports used for this story, and this report does not add arguments that the named sources did not publish.

What happens next

Under House rules, the petition must sit for seven legislative days before a signer can call it up for floor action. ABC News puts the earliest floor action after the Thanksgiving recess, as soon as December 2 or 3, 2026.

That window matters because all pending petitions expire when the 119th Congress ends on January 3, 2027. If the House does not act before that date, the petition and its 218 signatures lapse with the Congress that produced them.