357 Members of Congress Buried Their Own Misconduct Records Days After Demanding Epstein Files

By Lena Kovacs | TC Sentinel National Correspondent

WASHINGTON — Just days after demanding the release of sealed files naming associates of Jeffrey Epstein, 357 members of the United States House of Representatives voted to bury a resolution that would have forced public disclosure of their own colleagues' sexual harassment and misconduct records.

The vote was not close. It was not partisan. It was a bipartisan act of institutional self-preservation.

On March 4, House Roll Call #83 recorded 175 Republicans and 182 Democrats voting to refer H.Res. 1100 to the House Ethics Committee — a procedural maneuver that sounds administrative but functions as a kill shot. A motion to refer strips a resolution from the floor calendar and sends it to a committee that is under no obligation to act on it, report it back, or ever mention it again. In congressional parlance, it is how things are made to disappear.

The resolution, introduced by Rep. Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, would have directed the Ethics Committee to publicly release records of members found to have committed sexual harassment and misconduct violations. Mace brought it forward amid swirling allegations against Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Texas Republican, over his treatment of staff. She voted no on the motion to refer — meaning she wanted her own resolution to survive.

Only 64 of her colleagues joined her.

The hypocrisy was immediate and striking. In the same session, members of both parties had positioned themselves as crusaders for transparency in the Epstein matter, issuing statements and posting on social media about the public's right to know which powerful figures had been shielded from accountability. When it came to their own chamber, the calculus changed. The public's right to know apparently ends at the doors of the House Ethics Committee.

Among those voting to bury: Rep. Brian Mast, the Treasure Coast Republican representing Florida's 21st Congressional District. Mast was joined by 21 other Florida members who voted yea on the motion to refer — a bipartisan Florida bloc that included Republicans Bilirakis, Buchanan, Diaz-Balart, Dunn, Franklin, Gimenez, Haridopolos, Lee, Patronis, Rutherford, Salazar, Steube, and Webster, alongside Democrats Castor, Cherfilus-McCormick, Frankel, Frost, Moskowitz, Soto, Wasserman Schultz, and Wilson.

Six Florida members broke ranks and voted for disclosure: Republicans Aaron Bean, Kat Cammack, Byron Donalds, Randy Fine, Anna Paulina Luna, and Cory Mills.

Nationally, the 65 who voted to keep the resolution alive were a politically eclectic group. Republican nays included Andy Biggs, Lauren Boebert, Tim Burchett, James Comer, Thomas Massie, Scott Perry, Chip Roy, Victoria Spartz, and Elise Stefanik. Democrats voting for transparency included Pramila Jayapal, Ro Khanna, Jim McGovern, Kweisi Mfume, Eric Swalwell, Mark Takano, and Gabe Vasquez Vindman.

The roll call is clarifying. In a chamber that runs on procedural complexity, the motion to refer is designed to look like governance while functioning as suppression. A yea vote lets a member tell constituents they supported "sending it to the appropriate committee for review." What it actually means is that they voted to ensure no records see daylight.

H.Res. 1100 now sits in the Ethics Committee, where it will receive no hearing date, no markup, and no vote unless the committee's evenly divided membership unanimously decides otherwise. In the history of the modern Ethics Committee, that has happened exactly never with a referral of this kind. The resolution is, for all practical purposes, dead — killed not by opposition but by process, with 357 fingerprints on the weapon.

Mace has said she will reintroduce a version of the measure. Whether it meets the same fate will depend on whether 357 members of Congress can continue to demand transparency for everyone but themselves.

This article was reported and written by TC Sentinel's AI-assisted newsroom. All voting data sourced directly from the U.S. House of Representatives Office of the Clerk, Roll Call #83, 119th Congress.