The Epstein files are back before the United States House of Representatives. The House returns to session on Monday 9 November 2026, and Representative Thomas Massie says he will have the 218 signatures needed to force a vote on a second Epstein files bill. The story has run for more than a year, through a law passed by Congress, missed deadlines, court cases and millions of pages of documents. This explainer sets out what the files are, what the law required, why a second bill exists and how the vote would actually happen.

What are the Epstein files?

The files are the records of the United States government's investigations into Jeffrey Epstein, a financier and convicted sex offender who died in 2019, and Ghislaine Maxwell, his former girlfriend and accomplice, who was convicted of sex trafficking and is serving a prison sentence. The records include investigative material, court filings, correspondence and other documents gathered by the Justice Department over many years. Because Epstein was connected to many wealthy and powerful people, the question of what the government knew, and what it has chosen to release, has been politically charged for years. Congress, survivors of Epstein's abuse and the public have all pressed for the full record to be made public.

The files are not a single document. The Justice Department has said the material it holds runs to roughly six million pages of potentially responsive records, including duplicates. The department says it has now released about three and a half million pages. The sponsors of the disclosure law say about three million pages are still being withheld. That gap, and who is right about it, is the heart of the dispute.

What did the first law require?

In July 2025, Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie introduced the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Massie, a Kentucky Republican, led a discharge petition to force the bill to the floor over the objections of the House leadership. The petition gathered 218 signatures, the House passed the bill by 427 votes to one on 18 November 2025, the Senate agreed unanimously, and President Donald Trump signed it into law the following day as Public Law 119-38.

The law was direct. It ordered the Attorney General to publish all unclassified records relating to Epstein and Maxwell online, in a searchable and downloadable format, within 30 days. That deadline fell on 19 December 2025. The law listed only five narrow grounds on which material could be held back: victims' identifying information and personal files, child sexual abuse material, material that would jeopardise an active investigation, and only if narrowly tailored and temporary, images of death or injury, and properly classified national security information. It also barred the department from withholding material to spare anyone embarrassment.

The department missed the deadline. Its first release, on 19 December, contained only a fraction of the full record, and further batches followed in stages through January. The department said hundreds of lawyers were reviewing the records to decide what had to be blacked out. In early November 2026, the department announced a further large release of more than three million pages, along with more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images, according to the Associated Press. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche described it as the end of a long review process. The bill's sponsors dispute that the review is complete.

Why is there a second bill?

Massie and Khanna say the department has still not complied with the 2025 law. On 15 July 2026 they introduced a second bill, the Epstein Files Transparency Act II, designated H.R. 9694, with Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez as a co-sponsor. The new bill would give survivors, state attorneys general, other authorised state prosecutors and members of Congress the legal standing to challenge the Justice Department in court over its compliance with the original law. It would also let survivors obtain their own records. A companion bill, S. 5005, has been introduced in the Senate.

The dispute has also been fought in court. In June 2026, a federal judge in Washington, Judge Emmet Sullivan, ruled in a case called Phang v. Blanche that the Attorney General had effectively conceded the department was violating the act in its handling of unredacted and foreign-language documents. The case is on appeal. The department and the White House reject the sponsors' claims and say the department has complied with the act. A coalition of state attorneys general has written to congressional leaders urging swift passage of the second bill, arguing that nearly a year after the first law took effect the department has still not met its obligation.

Survivors have raised a separate concern about how the releases have been handled. A review by the Wall Street Journal found that the personal information of at least 43 victims was exposed in files that were released, despite the protections written into the first law. In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, 24 survivors called the redactions reckless and dangerous, and said the latest release did not provide the closure they had been promised. They are asking the department to release the evidence that exists, to explain why millions of pages remain withheld, and to stop treating accountability as optional.

How does a discharge petition work?

The second bill has not been scheduled for a vote by the House leadership, so Massie is using the same procedure that forced the first bill to the floor: a discharge petition. Under House Rule XV, a petition signed by a majority of the House, 218 members, can force a bill out of committee and onto the floor without the leadership's agreement. On 31 August 2026, Massie filed Discharge Petition No. 27, asking the House to discharge the Rules Committee from considering H.Res. 1430, the resolution that would bring the second bill to the floor. The petition is recorded on the House Clerk's public website.

By 16 September, the petition had 216 signatures: 212 Democrats and four Republicans, Massie himself, Nancy Mace, Ralph Norman and Brian Fitzpatrick. The House then left Washington for the pre-election recess, and members can only sign a discharge petition while the House is in session, so the count froze at 216. On 5 November, two days after the midterm elections, Massie wrote on social media: "When we return next week, we'll get 218 signatures for Epstein Files Transparency Act II, which guarantees a vote." He has said two Democrats who were out sick have pledged to sign, which would take the petition to exactly 218.

Reaching 218 signatures does not produce a vote by itself. The motion to discharge must then sit on the Discharge Calendar for seven legislative days before anyone can act on it. After that, the House votes on the motion to discharge, with twenty minutes of debate. If that vote carries, the House takes up the rule, H.Res. 1430, and votes on adopting it. Only then does the bill itself come up for a vote. On the published House calendar, with the House in session from 9 to 12 November and from 16 to 20 November, the earliest realistic vote on the bill itself would fall in late November or the first week of December.

What happens next?

The first test comes as soon as the House returns on 9 November, when members can start adding their signatures to the petition. If Massie's forecast is right and the petition reaches 218, the discharge process begins and the timetable above starts to run. If it falls short, the bill stays stuck in committee unless the Speaker chooses to schedule it, and the sponsors have said they would look to the next session of Congress, when newly elected members take their seats.

Even if the House passes the second bill, it would still need to pass the Senate and be signed by the President before it became law. The Senate companion, S. 5005, gives it a vehicle in the other chamber, but no timetable for Senate action has been set. For now, the immediate question is a narrow one: whether two more members of the House put their names to Discharge Petition No. 27 this week. The Clerk's website keeps a public list of every signer, so the count can be checked as it changes.

What the files do and do not prove

One point matters for anyone reading the released material. The department has said the law required it to publish everything, including documents that were fake or falsely submitted, so the released files contain unverified claims and not everything in them is true. The files are a record of what the government collected during its investigations, not a set of proven findings. Names appearing in the documents are not, by themselves, evidence of wrongdoing, and material about victims is meant to be redacted before publication. That is why survivors and their advocates have pressed both for fuller disclosure and for careful handling of the material that is released.

Key dates

Jeffrey Epstein died in 2019. Ghislaine Maxwell was later convicted of sex trafficking. The first Epstein Files Transparency Act was introduced on 15 July 2025, passed the House 427 to one on 18 November 2025, and was signed into law on 19 November 2025, with a release deadline of 19 December 2025 that the department missed. In June 2026 a federal judge found the department had effectively conceded it was violating the act. The second bill, H.R. 9694, was introduced on 15 July 2026. Discharge Petition No. 27 was filed on 31 August 2026 and reached 216 signatures by 16 September. The House returns on 9 November 2026, when Massie says the petition will reach 218.