The underlying legislation is HR3633. Purpose stated at the start of the Bill:
“To provide for a system of regulation of the offer and sale of digital commodities by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and for other purposes.”
Your comments were dead on. Demands for release of Epstein files are urelated and inappropriate for this bill. For the benefit of those who don’t recall how the Dems made a huge scandal out of Iran-Contra: Citing human rights abuses, some Dems first tried passing a stand-alone bill ban on using US funds to support the Contras. This failed to pass despite Democrat majorities. Then the Dems tacked the one=page “Boland Amendment” onto a massive bill that did pass. This gave the Dems the stick they wanted to beat the Reagan administration, and the cover to pass it off as the will of Congress (which wikipedia still does).
The Dems know 100% release of Epstein materials is impossible due to court orders, privacy laws, etc., and that the storm following release would likely disrupt Trump’s reforms and foreign policy. They are looking for an avenue to attack and derail the Trump/MAGA agenda.
Correct—this is all about optics, not the facts on the ground.
The Republicans got played.
Thank you Chewbarkah —
The story was from Gateway Pundit, but my “Spidey” antenna were rotating as they sensed it was not a simple up/down vote on release.
I remember the Boland Amendment well. In Oklahoma we constitutionally enacted a requirement that all legislation must contain only relevant topics. No wooly boogers or feather bedding. I helped write it, and won the first case against flouting the change years ago. I’ve often thought that similar legislation would be good for the US Congress. It would be the end of 1,000 page bills.
Gwjack