By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has accused congressional Republicans of “covering up for pedophiles,” as the party continues to block a measure forcing the release of federal files on Jeffrey Epstein. “We don’t buy it at all,” Jeffries said on MSNBC’s The Briefing. “Republicans on The Hill for months have been doing Donald Trump’s bidding and trying to hide these Epstein files from the American people, notwithstanding the fact that the victims have called for full transparency so there can be accountability. And we fully support these brave victims.”
Jeffries said the truth lies buried in those files—and so do the names of powerful men who built their fortunes, their faith, and their politics on hypocrisy. “Mike Johnson and this group continue to cover up for the pedophiles. That’s crazy,” he said. “Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva was going to be a great member succeeding her legendary dad in the Congress. She’s made clear, ‘I’m gonna be the 218th vote on the discharge petition to force an up or down vote, which will pass the House, forcing the Trump administration to release the Epstein files.’ That explains, in part, why Republicans have been on vacation for the last several weeks.” Speaker Johnson refuses to swear Grijalva in, claiming the House is only in “pro forma session” due to the ongoing government shutdown. But behind that bureaucratic smokescreen lies a moral crisis—a Congress willing to look away while predators sit among them.
From the pews to the statehouse, the Republican Party has cultivated what James Baldwin once called “the criminality of innocence”—a nation that preaches purity while practicing corruption. The records tell a damning story. A South Carolina Republican lawmaker, RJ May, who went by the grotesque screen name “joebidennnn69,” pleaded guilty to distributing more than 200 child sex abuse videos, many involving toddlers. In Texas, Robert Morris, a megachurch pastor and former Trump adviser, was indicted for child sex crimes dating back decades. He once stood beside Trump and Attorney General William Barr, preaching about “protecting children,” even as his accuser said he had molested her as a child. And in North Dakota, former state senator Ray Holmberg pleaded guilty to traveling to Prague for sex with minors—fourteen trips in all, ten years of depravity under the alias “Sean Evans.”
These are not isolated cases. They are part of an epidemic—a sickness dressed in suits and scripture. The National Women’s Defense League documented more than 400 allegations of sexual harassment against 145 sitting state lawmakers between 2013 and 2024. PBS News found 147 lawmakers across 44 states accused of sexual misconduct since 2017. The problem, as one legislator put it, “feels like it goes hand in hand with the work.” Marjorie Taylor Greene, in an outburst that betrayed more truth than she intended, dared her Republican colleagues to “put it ALL out there”—including “the entire Jeffrey Epstein files” and “sexual harassment and assault claims that were secretly settled, paying off victims with taxpayer money.” Her threat was not courage but calculation, a warning to others that exposure is a two-edged sword.
Meanwhile, the same party has weaponized “grooming” rhetoric to smear LGBTQ+ teachers and families while harboring predators within its ranks. It is a perverse theater in which the villains pose as moral crusaders. In Minnesota, former GOP operative Anton Lazzaro’s 21-year sentence for trafficking underage girls remains upheld after the Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal. Yet the same political movement that birthed his career now pretends such crimes are anomalies rather than reflections of power’s decay. The list of offenders reads like a directory of the self-righteous. Pastors. Politicians. Party leaders. Each one invoking God and freedom while preying upon the innocent. Baldwin once wrote that “people pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become.” America’s bill is long overdue. Jeffries’s warning cuts to the heart of that debt. “This is about accountability,” he said. “This is about truth.” The Epstein files—hidden, delayed, denied—represent more than evidence. They are a mirror held up to a Congress that has lost its reflection.
Until those files see daylight, the children who never had a voice remain buried in silence, and those who swore oaths to protect them remain complicit in their suffering. “The American people deserve the truth,” Jeffries said. “And the victims deserve justice.”
