Epstein Files: 'Proudly Supported' Transparency - But Didn't Sign the Petition or Attend the Wexner Deposition

Why This Matters for NY-23

When a constituent asks about government transparency, they deserve a complete answer. Langworthy says he “never opposed” releasing Epstein files and “proudly supported” the bill. But his letter doesn’t mention that he refused to sign the discharge petition that actually forced the vote — a petition the White House called “a hostile act.” Only 4 Republicans signed: Massie, Greene, Boebert, and Mace. Langworthy was not among them. The bill passed 427-1 only after Trump reversed position.

Then, on February 18, 2026, the House Oversight Committee — on which Langworthy sits — deposed Les Wexner about his ties to Epstein. Zero Republican members attended. Langworthy spent that day on a district-wide funding announcement tour, beginning with a Facebook Live event at Buffalo Niagara Airport at 10:06 AM.

Statement

Source: Constituent Letter Response, January 14, 2026

“I want to begin by stating that Jeffrey Epstein was a disgusting individual, and I support full transparency and accountability regarding the Epstein files. I have never opposed the release of the documents since Epstein’s 2019 suicide…”

“To that end, I proudly supported the Epstein Files Transparency Act (H.R. 4405) when this legislation passed the House on November 18, 2025.”

Congressional Record

H.R. 4405 Final Passage:

• House passed: November 18, 2025 (427-1)
• Senate passed: November 19, 2025 (unanimous consent)
• Trump signed: November 19, 2025 (Public Law 119-38)
• Langworthy vote: YES
• Source: Congress.gov, White House Statement

Discharge Petition (Sept 2 - Nov 12, 2025):

• Filed by: Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY)
• Required signatures: 218 (majority of House)
• Republican signers: ONLY 4 - Massie, Greene, Boebert, Mace
• Langworthy signature: DID NOT SIGN
• Source: CBS News, TIME Magazine, Rep. Pat Ryan Press Release

The Timeline

What the Letter Omits

Langworthy’s stated reason for not signing the petition (Erie News Now, October 2025):

“I wholeheartedly support justice and complete transparency for the Epstein victims, which is why, in addition to co-sponsoring and voting for the full release of grand jury testimony, I am working with my House Oversight Committee colleagues to conduct the most comprehensive investigation to date.”

The problem: The Oversight Committee approach allowed leadership to delay indefinitely. The discharge petition actually forced a vote - over administration opposition that Langworthy did not defy.

The Wexner Deposition (February 18, 2026)

On February 18, 2026, the House Oversight Committee conducted a transcribed deposition of Les Wexner — the billionaire founder of L Brands (Victoria’s Secret) and Epstein’s most prominent financial patron — at Wexner’s mansion in New Albany, Ohio. The deposition lasted approximately five hours.

Key facts about the deposition:

What Wexner testified: According to news reports, Wexner denied knowledge of Epstein’s crimes, said he was “horrified” when he learned of them, and described Epstein as having “deceived” him. He acknowledged giving Epstein broad power of attorney over his finances.

Republican absence: The absence of all Republican Oversight members was noted in multiple news reports. Committee Republicans did not provide a public explanation for their collective absence. Chairman James Comer had previously expressed support for the Epstein investigation.

Why this matters: In October 2025, Langworthy specifically cited his Oversight Committee work as the reason he did not need to sign the discharge petition:

“I am working with my House Oversight Committee colleagues to conduct the most comprehensive investigation to date.”

When the committee conducted one of its highest-profile depositions — questioning the man who bankrolled Epstein’s operation — Langworthy did not attend.

Fact-Check: His Claims vs. The Record

Questions This Raises

1. If Langworthy “never opposed” release, why didn’t he sign the discharge petition alongside Massie, Greene, Boebert, and Mace?

2. Did the White House pressure campaign influence his decision not to sign?

3. Does voting YES after Trump reversed course — when the bill was guaranteed to pass 427-1 — constitute “proudly supporting” transparency?

4. Why does the letter not mention the discharge petition at all?

5. Langworthy cited his Oversight Committee work as justification for not signing the discharge petition. Why did he not attend the Wexner deposition — one of the committee’s highest-profile Epstein-related proceedings?

6. Zero Republican Oversight members attended the Wexner deposition. Was the absence coordinated, or did each member independently choose not to attend?

7. Langworthy conducted a full-day district funding tour on the day of the deposition. Was this tour scheduled before or after the deposition date was announced?

Sources

Legislative Record:

• Congress.gov: H.R. 4405 — EPSTEIN Records Transparency Act
• White House: Signing statement (November 20, 2025)

Discharge Petition:

• Rep. Pat Ryan: Press release naming NY Republicans who refused to sign (September 26, 2025)
• Erie News Now: Langworthy statement on petition (October 2025)
• CBS News: “Epstein discharge petition secures final signature” (November 13, 2025)
• TIME: “Which House Republicans Helped Force a Vote on Epstein Files” (November 13, 2025)
• NBC News: “Congress passes bill to force release of Epstein files” (November 20, 2025)

Wexner Deposition (February 18, 2026):

• CNBC: “Epstein benefactor Les Wexner deposed by congressional committee” (February 18, 2026)
• PBS NewsHour: “House Oversight Committee deposes Les Wexner in Epstein probe” (February 18, 2026)
• Axios: “Wexner deposition marks escalation in Epstein investigation” (February 18, 2026)
• The Hill: “No Republican members attend Wexner deposition” (February 2026)
• Ohio Capital Journal: “Wexner deposed at New Albany mansion” (February 18, 2026)
• Daily Caller: Coverage of Wexner deposition and Republican absence (February 2026)
• Langworthy Facebook Live: Buffalo Niagara Airport funding announcement, 10:06 AM (February 18, 2026)
• Langworthy Facebook post: Dunkirk Conservation Club event (February 18, 2026)

Related: Epstein Files: Voting Against Transparency, Then Claiming to Support It (July 2025 fact-check)

Note: This entry documents publicly available information from official congressional records and news reports. Readers may draw their own conclusions.

Research contribution: Constituent submission via LangworthyWatch

In Plain Language

There are three parts to this story:

Part 1: The Vote. The Epstein Files bill passed 427-1. Langworthy voted YES — but only after Trump reversed his opposition. The bill reached the floor because of a discharge petition that bypassed leadership. The White House called signing it “a hostile act.” Only 4 Republicans signed. Langworthy did not.

Part 2: The Justification. When asked why he didn’t sign the petition, Langworthy said he was “working with my House Oversight Committee colleagues to conduct the most comprehensive investigation to date.” In other words: he didn’t need to sign the petition because the committee was handling it.

Part 3: The Deposition. On February 18, 2026, that same committee deposed Les Wexner — the billionaire who bankrolled Epstein’s operation for decades. Zero Republican members attended. Langworthy, a sitting Oversight Committee member, spent the day on a district-wide funding announcement tour — posting a Facebook Live from the Buffalo airport at 10:06 AM.

The pattern: Langworthy voted YES when it was safe, cited his committee work to avoid the petition, and then did not show up when the committee questioned Epstein’s most prominent financial patron.

Last updated: May 22, 2026

Update: May 12, 2026 — Democrats Hold Survivor Hearing Because Republicans Won’t

On May 12, 2026 — nearly three months after Langworthy skipped the Wexner deposition — House Oversight Democrats organized a field hearing in West Palm Beach, Florida, titled “Survivors Fight for Justice: Exposing Epstein’s Crimes in Palm Beach and Across the World.” Epstein survivors testified under oath.

Key facts:

• The hearing was organized by Ranking Member Robert Garcia and House Oversight Democrats — a minority-party “shadow hearing,” not an official bipartisan committee hearing
• Republicans on the committee were not invited, because the Republican majority has not scheduled a single official hearing with Epstein survivors
• Langworthy did not attend — but as a Republican member, he was not invited to a Democratic minority hearing

What this adds to the pattern:

Langworthy told constituents in October 2025 that he didn’t need to sign the discharge petition because he was “working with my House Oversight Committee colleagues to conduct the most comprehensive investigation to date.” By May 2026:

The claim that the Republican Oversight Committee majority is conducting “the most comprehensive investigation to date” is difficult to square with a record that includes zero official hearings with survivors and zero Republican attendance at the Wexner deposition.

Note on framing: Social media posts suggesting Langworthy “skipped” the May 12 hearing are not fully accurate — it was a Democratic minority hearing and Republicans were not invited. The more accurate story is that the Republican majority controls the committee and has not convened official survivor hearings. Democrats organized their own because Republicans would not.

Update: July 16, 2026 — The Full Participation Record: He Chose Which Epstein Proceedings to Attend

A review of the House Oversight Committee’s Epstein docket through July 16, 2026 corrects an oversimplified version of this story. Langworthy did not skip every Epstein proceeding. He showed up for some and not others — and the pattern of which ones is the point.

Where he participated:

• He attended and personally questioned former President Bill Clinton at Clinton’s closed-door, transcribed deposition on February 27, 2026, in Chappaqua, NY. It was Langworthy who asked Clinton about the infamous “hot tub” photograph. Clinton told him: “I sat in the hot tub for five minutes or whatever it was, and I got up and went to bed.” Afterward, Langworthy characterized the former president as “quite candid, probably more candid than his attorneys were comfortable with” (attributed to Langworthy in Fox News and CNN coverage of the deposition).
• He voted YES on final passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, H.R. 4405 (Nov 18, 2025, 427–1) — though, as documented above, only after President Trump reversed his opposition, and without signing the discharge petition that forced the vote.
• He stated he opposes a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell. In an April 2026 Forbes survey of the committee’s roughly 25 Republicans, only a handful responded; Langworthy was among those who said Maxwell should not be pardoned.

Where he did not:

• He did not attend the February 18, 2026 deposition of Les Wexner — Epstein’s primary financial patron. Zero Republican members attended (documented above). Nine days later he was in the room for Bill Clinton.
• He was not among the five Republicans who voted to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi. On March 4, 2026, the full committee voted 24–19 to subpoena Bondi over the Justice Department’s failure to produce roughly half of the Epstein files it holds. Five Republicans crossed party lines to force her testimony — Nancy Mace, Tim Burchett, Lauren Boebert, Michael Cloud, and Scott Perry. Langworthy was not one of them. (His individual vote is documented by his absence from the named crossover list; the committee did not publish a per-member roll and he may have voted no or been absent. We state only what the record confirms: he did not join the bipartisan group that voted to compel Bondi to testify.) And when Bondi did sit for a transcribed interview on May 29, 2026 (Room 2154, Rayburn), Langworthy did not attend — the transcript’s attendance roster lists Chairman Comer and nine other members (the rest Democrats), none of them Langworthy.
• Across the committee’s Epstein witness interviews, he appears on exactly one attendance roster. Each transcript opens with a “Present: Representatives…” block. Of the eight Oversight Epstein interviews whose transcripts publish a roster, Langworthy is listed on one — Bill Clinton’s (Feb 27). He is absent from the other seven: former AG William Barr (Aug 18, 2025), Gateway founder Ted Waitt (Apr 30), former MCC corrections officer Tova Noel (May 18), former AG Pam Bondi (May 29), Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (May 6), Bill Gates (June 10), and Epstein assistant Lesley Groff (June 9). (No single member attends every interview, and other Republicans rotate through these; the point is the contrast — he was in the room for the former Democratic president, and for none of the other seven witnesses whose rosters can be checked.) Attendance is not determinable for the Ghislaine Maxwell deposition (Feb; released as video, no roster) and the Kathy Ruemmler interview (July 15; transcript not yet posted).

The structural fact that has not changed: As of July 16, 2026, the Republican Oversight majority — on which Langworthy sits — has still never held an official public hearing with Epstein survivors. Chairman Comer said on July 1 that he “would like to have a public hearing” and has invited survivors, but none has been scheduled. The only survivor hearing to date remains the Democratic minority’s May 12 field hearing in West Palm Beach. Meanwhile the Justice Department has released roughly 3.5 million heavily redacted pages of the roughly 6 million it says it collected, characterizing the remainder as duplicates, unrelated, or privileged — a characterization critics dispute; on June 26 a federal judge ordered more material unredacted, and on July 2 DOJ refused and signaled an appeal.

Langworthy — who in September voted against holding the Attorney General in contempt for exactly this kind of non-compliance — has issued no public statement on the withholding or the court fight. A review of his official press releases and public statements through July 16, 2026 found nothing on the DOJ’s refusal to produce the rest; his most recent public word on the Epstein files remains his July 2025 release praising President Trump’s transparency order. In other words, the binding-enforcement tools he declined to support (the discharge petition, the contempt motion) are the very mechanisms that might now compel the files he says he wants released, and he has not spoken to their absence.

His Recorded Votes on Epstein

Langworthy sits on the House Rules Committee — the panel that decides what reaches the floor and under what terms. That makes his Epstein record less a story about missing votes than about procedural ones. The pattern the record supports: he repeatedly voted to block or foreclose the binding, Democrat-driven mechanisms that would have forced the files out earlier in 2025, then voted YES on final passage of H.R. 4405 in November — after President Trump dropped his opposition days before the vote. He never cast a vote against final release itself.

Floor votes (each individually confirmed from the House Clerk’s roll-call records):

Ordering the “previous question” is the procedural tool the majority uses to cut off the minority and keep control of the floor. On the same day he voted for final passage (RC 289), Langworthy first voted for the rule (RC 290 and RC 291) that set aside the discharge-petition resolution — the very mechanism Reps. Massie and Khanna had used to force the bill up. Both facts are true at once: he supported final passage, and he supported the procedural moves leadership used to control how it got there. The lone “nay” on final passage was Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA); Langworthy was among the 427 yeas, under suspension of the rules.

Rules Committee votes (per-member record votes, confirmed verbatim from the committee reports):

• Jul 14, 2025 — Voted NO on the Khanna amendment to attach binding Epstein-file release to the CLARITY Act (H.R. 3633); defeated 5–7, with Rep. Ralph Norman the lone Republican to cross over. In his own statement days later, Langworthy said he “voted no because it was a gimmick—not a path to justice,” and called the Democratic effort “a cynical political stunt that wouldn’t have released a single file.”
• Jul 17, 2025 — In the meeting on the rule for H.Res. 589, voted Nay on Rep. McGovern’s motion to set aside the non-binding GOP resolution and instead take up the binding H.R. 4405 (Record Vote 156, defeated 4–9), Nay on the two follow-on appeals (157, 158), and Yea to report the rule (159). (Per-member tables in H.Rept. 119-209.)
• Sept 2, 2025 — In the meeting on the rule for H.Res. 668, voted Nay on every Democratic motion — including Rep. Garcia’s motion to deem the Attorney General in contempt if DOJ defied the Oversight subpoena (Record Vote 165) and Rep. McGovern’s motion to force immediate consideration of H.R. 4405 (166) — and Yea to report the rule (170). Massie filed the discharge petition the same day. (Per-member tables in H.Rept. 119-232.)

Oversight Committee:

• Mar 4, 2026 — Was not among the five Republicans (Mace, Burchett, Boebert, Cloud, Perry) who joined the Democrats to subpoena AG Pam Bondi over the withheld files (24–19). The committee did not publish a per-member roll, so we report only that he did not join the crossover majority.

Not a vote: the Massie discharge petition (Sept–Nov 2025) is a signature, not a vote. Langworthy did not sign it (only 4 Republicans did).

His framing, in his own words: Langworthy has consistently said he supports “full transparency” and cast his procedural “no” votes as opposition to Democratic “gimmicks,” not to release. On final passage he said he stood “for full justice for all of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims.” The record does not show him ever voting against releasing the files; it shows him voting, on at least five occasions, against the binding procedural vehicles that would have forced release earlier in 2025 — and then for final passage once Trump’s reversal had made it a near-unanimous, low-risk vote.

The Participation Record at a Glance

In plain language: The clearest fact in this update is not that Langworthy avoids Epstein proceedings. It’s that he can and does attend them — he spent hours questioning Bill Clinton and left praising his candor. He was simply not in the room when the committee deposed the billionaire who bankrolled Epstein, and he did not join the five Republicans who voted to make Trump’s Attorney General explain the files she withheld. He supports transparency where it points at Democrats; he is quieter where it points at the administration or at Epstein’s own network. And the majority he belongs to still has not given survivors a hearing of their own.

Sources for this update:

• CNN: “House Oversight Committee releases video of Clinton depositions on Epstein” (March 2, 2026) — Langworthy questioning Clinton; hot-tub exchange
• PBS NewsHour: “Republicans finally questioned the Clintons about Epstein” — Langworthy “quite candid” characterization
• CNN: “House Oversight panel votes to subpoena AG Pam Bondi in Epstein probe” (March 4, 2026) — 24–19 vote; the five Republican crossover votes
• CBS News: “House Oversight Committee votes to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi” (March 4, 2026)
• Forbes: “Only 6 Of 25 GOP Committee Members Say Ghislaine Maxwell Shouldn’t Be Pardoned” (April 25, 2026)
• NOTUS: “James Comer says Oversight will hold public hearings on Epstein” (July 1, 2026)
• The Hill: “Alan Dershowitz set for House Oversight Committee interview” (July 2026) — Dershowitz interview scheduled July 20, 2026
• Rep. Langworthy press release: “Applauds President Trump’s Order for Full Transparency on Epstein Files” (July 2025) — his own “gimmick / cynical political stunt” wording
• House Clerk roll-call records: RC 194, RC 289, RC 290, RC 291; H.Res. 879 text (§8 tabling H.Res. 581)
• Rules Committee per-member record votes: H.Rept. 119-209 (H.Res. 589 rule, Jul 17, 2025) and H.Rept. 119-232 (H.Res. 668 rule, Sep 2, 2025)
• Oversight Committee transcript appearance rosters (Langworthy absent from each “Present:” list except Clinton’s): Barr (Aug 18, 2025), Waitt (Apr 30), Tova Noel (May 18), Bondi (May 29), Lutnick (May 6), Gates (Jun 10), Groff (Jun 9)

Last updated: July 16, 2026