House Speaker Mike Johnson on Epstein files: We want the American people to see it.

Mr. Speaker, I know that in terms of just whether there's a schism in MAGA world or in the Republican Party, I think the President echoed your comments about any additional documents related to this obsession with the Epstein files. He said it, I think he's saying today basically the same thing you said, that any pertinent things, if the court allows to produce any pertinent grand jury testimony subject to the court approval, and you've said that too, and do you expect that to happen? I mean, how does this play out? It's everywhere. It leads us all, drudge, it's all over the place with sirens on drudge, whoo, whoo, whoo, because someone drew a, in 2003 might've drawn a picture of a, I don't know, a body letter before the guy even, you know, all the, the real info hadn't even been out at that point, I don't think, about this guy. The President and I talked about that ridiculous allegation this morning. He said it's patently absurd. He's never drawn such a picture. He's never thought of drawing such a picture. And he said, did you see the language of this bogus supposed communication or card or something I supposedly sent to Epstein? He said, I don't talk like that. I don't think like that. They're literally making things up. He's so frustrated by it. And he's going to wind up, I think, suing some of the media outlets that, uh, that, that had put all this out there because they informed them that it was totally, uh, contrived. So look, the president is the most maligned and attack political figure in the history of American politics. There's no question about it, but he's also the most resilient. And you see at the same time, his approval ratings are skyrocketing by, by CNN had a story, I think a day or two ago, he was at 90% approval rating. We've, there's never been a president that high. So the more that they attack him, the more people see through it is what, what, what could be released or why wasn't it? What, because it, I mean, how do you, I don't know whether you have no more information on it, but what do you think was going on when it looked like something was going to come out then? Oh, there's nothing to release. And from a PR standpoint, that was a, I don't know that it wasn't great. The way it was handled. Is there more to come out? Will it come out? Are you in favor of it coming? Yeah, I, I, I am. Look, I've been on, on record repeatedly. I've, I've never seen all of the Epstein files. It's outside my lane. I mean, I'm running the house. This is over at DOJ, but, um, what, what I believe in is maximum transparency and so does president Trump. And that's what he said. He, he says it many different ways, many different times, but we want all credible evidence to be put out there for the American people. Reagan used to remind us to trust the American people. They're smarter than anybody gives them credit for. And I believe people can draw their own conclusions about that, but they, they have to have the documents. Now, at the same time, I think the, the, the interest here and the concern, and frankly, the duty, the responsibility is to protect the innocent, right? So if you have minors who are victims of sex trafficking, heaven forbid, uh, child credit predatory activity, you can't have their names out there, right? So the, the courts and law enforcement and government agencies have a custom of protecting the innocent, you know, uh, bogus allegations that would be made against people that can't be authenticated, you know, so that's the concern. They're trying to thread that needle because the department of justice does have a responsibility to make sure those people's lives are not destroyed. Imagine if their names came out on a list immediately, the media and social media would pounce on these people and it would be lasting and permanent damage. So they've got to be very careful. But aside from that, aside from the things that would be, you know, held back from a court of law, I say, put it out there. And I think the president believes the same thing. Mr. Speaker, it sounds like there is no daylight right now. The way you're describing it, there is no daylight between what you and the president want released and other Republicans. But there is a portrayal that there is a schism going on in the Republican party. I mean, representative Norman sided with Democrats and trying to amend the crypto legislation to force the release of all of the Epstein files. I mean, this is playing out in Congress. And to the extent that this impedes your ability to advance the Republican legislative agenda, how do you repair that rift? If it sounds like there is no daylight between what you and the president want released and what other members of Congress want released? Well, then there's no daylight between us and Ralph Norman. I spent hours with Ralph. He's a dear friend. Yesterday, what Ralph was trying to do, he told me, he said, honestly, when the Democrat amendment came up, which was in the rules committee not to get too deep in the weeds, but we were working on the rescission package. That was the clawback fraud, waste and abuse in federal spending. The Democrats tried to hijack the hearing. So the other Republicans on the rules committee did what they're supposed to do, and that is protect our legislative process and get the spending cut bill to the floor. Ralph just kind of made a spontaneous decision. The amendment was kind of dropped in at the very last minute. He hadn't given a lot of thought, but he said, well, I'm for transparency. I'll vote for that. Well, guess what? Every member of the rules committee agrees with the same thing that we all were in a room last night for an hour. All of them, Ralph, Chip Roy, the other members of the rules committee, they all agree. And so they signed on to another resolution last night in committee asserting that very thing. So all the House Republicans, I'm telling you, every single one of them here agree with this idea. Everybody wants the Epstein files, which is the real documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and anybody associated with that. We want the American people to see it. We've all committed to that. And everybody's saying it in different ways, but the message is the exact same.