Rep. Jasmine Crockett didn’t mince words on Monday when she unloaded on Speaker Mike Johnson over the shifting Republican stance on releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files. And she did it on live television, just after CNN anchor Jake Tapper gently reminded her that cable news has looser rules on language.
Crockett, a Texas Democrat and member of the House Oversight Committee, was reacting to a weekend of political whiplash. After months of calling the bipartisan push to release the Epstein documents a “Democrat hoax,” former President Donald Trump abruptly reversed himself on Sunday, urging House Republicans to go ahead and vote the files out. That change came just as Rep. Adelita Grijalva of Arizona was sworn in—her arrival giving the House petition the 218 signatures needed to force a vote.
The timing was hard to ignore, and CNN played a clip of Johnson brushing off suggestions that he had tried to block that vote. Standing in a Capitol hallway, Johnson told reporters he was simply worried about protecting victims. “Those who don’t want their names to be out there,” he said, “and I’m not sure the discharge does that.”
Tapper asked Crockett for her response.
“I would cuss, but I’m not going to — I’m just going to say he’s full of it,” she said, before Tapper laughed and pointed out that cable allowed stronger language. Crockett paused, laughed again, and finally went there: “He’s full of [expletive].”
Crockett didn’t leave the charge hanging. She laid out why she believes Johnson has been trying to stall the issue for weeks.
“Number one, we know that he didn’t even bring the House back in because he was trying to avoid us dealing with Epstein,” she said. Then she pointed to the now-infamous 50-day delay in seating Grijalva, calling it a constitutional violation that effectively denied Arizonans representation. “He violated the Constitution to avoid this,” she said. “So miss me on pretending that this is about the victims.”
Crockett also took aim at Republicans who have publicly speculated about the identities of alleged victims or witnesses in earlier Epstein-related documents — even after the legal filings were released with names fully redacted. She noted that at least one victim’s family had criticized those efforts, saying Republicans were fueling rumors and pulling innocent people into the narrative.
That, Crockett argued, made Johnson’s sudden insistence on protecting victims ring hollow. “He’s counting on this not going forward,” she said, suggesting the speaker had assumed Senate Republicans would block the measure or that there weren’t enough votes to send it across the Capitol in the first place. “One of the two, but he never plans for this to actually go forward.”
Whether Johnson adjusts his strategy now that Trump has flipped remains to be seen. But Crockett made clear that Democrats aren’t buying the speaker’s victim-protection rationale.
