Raphaël Schreiber: Legislative director, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.)

July 15, 2025, was “the most stressful day” of Raphaël Schreiber’s career in Congress.

The legislative director for Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) had a “very brief” conversation with the congressman about the idea of a bill directing the Department of Justice to publicly release materials on its Jeffrey Epstein investigation.

“And then he told me, ‘You have until the end of the day to get it done,’” Schreiber said — a far cry from the weeks of bill writing that is typical and a turnaround he’d never seen in a personal office before.

After a whirlwind day of drafting, consulting with lawyers to make sure the ultimate product could survive a court challenge, working with parliamentarians in Congress on procedure, and teaming up with Rep. Ro Khanna’s (D-Calif.) staff, the Epstein Files Transparency Act and an accompanying discharge petition to force a vote got filed by that evening.

The bill ended up being one of the most politically consequential pieces of legislation of President Trump’s second term. The White House for months furiously lobbied against it. Around a dozen Republicans had co-sponsored the resolution to tee up the bill, but only three other Republicans — Rep. Nancy Mace (S.C.), Rep. Lauren Boebert (Colo.), and then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) — signed on to the discharge petition.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) critiqued the way the bill was written, arguing that it did not adequately protect victims of Epstein’s abuse.

“It’s something when the third-most powerful person in the country is commenting on your work directly,” Schreiber said. “I had a heart attack the first time I heard it — thinking, ‘Crap, did I mess up something?’”

“Obviously, when you read the language, there was more than ample language for the protection of the victims. The victims’ lawyers had affirmed this,” Schreiber said. “And three judges also affirmed it, two in the Southern District of New York and one in the Southern District of Florida, attesting to the very clear, plain language of the bill.”

Unable to sway the three Republican women and facing a floor vote on the bill, Trump at the last minute threw his support behind the Epstein Files Transparency Act and signed it.

Schreiber’s advice to other legislative staffers is not to wait until being handed an assignment to get busy: “If you have time on your hands, study something new and apply it.”