Seven weeks ago today, Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, was struck by what seemed to him a great notion, a bolt of inspiration: “I know; I’ll end this legislative session early, send everyone home before the August recess even begins, and when we all come back in September this whole Jeffrey Epstein mess will have blown over!”

Oops.

So the guy who’d sooner have Congress leave town than potentially vote to expose evidence that the president might be a pedophile now finds himself trying to remember the kind of September when life was slow, and oh, so mellow.

Johnson’s gambit

Instead, his stupid logistical gambit somehow succeeded only in accelerating interest in a deceased sex trafficker, necessitating — what else — another Mike Johnson brainstor

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