Adelita Grijalva on Mike Johnson, Jeffrey Epstein, and the Senate’s Bad Deal

Elected 50 days ago, the Arizona representative will finally be sworn in today

Adelita Grijalva has been waiting.

Her Arizona constituents have been waiting.

Justice for Jeffrey Epstein’s survivors has been waiting.

Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva won her House race on September 23 to fill the seat vacated by her late father, the progressive Rep. Raul Grijalva, who died of cancer in March. The younger Grijalva, 55, secured nearly 70 percent of the vote in Arizona’s diverse seventh district, which includes much of Tucson and stretches along the border with Mexico.

Yet Grijalva has, so far, been unable to take office — because Speaker Mike Johnson has denied her a formal swearing in ceremony. “I’ve been in a complete limbo,” she tells The Contrarian, as Johnson has used excuse after debunked excuse to avoid his duty. Grijalva even filed a federal lawsuit attempting to secure her seat in Congress while decrying an abuse of power. “For Speaker Johnson to be so dismissive of 813,000 people in southern Arizona is not acceptable,” Grijalva says. “And it really highlights how corrupt this system can be under a certain kind of leader.”

As a representative elect, Grijalva has enjoyed a few of the trappings of her office, but no real authority — an experience she likens to being handed the keys to a car without “an engine, gas, or wheels.” Grijalva has been unable to onboard staff or even sign a lease to open an office in her district. Locally and nationwide, frustration over Johnson’s refusal to seat her has turned Grijalva into a cause célèbre. “Everywhere I go, you can hear the chants,” she says. “They just start: Swear her in!”

Now, after 50 days in suspended animation, Grijalva will finally be administered her oath of office — in advance of the House taking up Senate legislation to reopen the government this week.

The public drama over seating Grijalva has revolved around two major storylines in Washington. One, is the government shutdown, of course. But the second is a fight over the long-delayed release of the Epstein Files, which Grijalva’s vote can help force once she is properly seated.

The first storyline provided Johnson with his pretext. The Speaker settled on the shutdown as the explicit reason he wouldn’t swear in Grijalva, claiming he needed to wait until the House returned to “regular session” before he could administer an oath. Nevermind that Johnson himself adjourned the House in an effort to force the Senate, alone, to resolve the government shutdown. Or that others in Congress have been sworn in during government shutdowns.

Although the re-opening of government may be clearing a path for her to take office, Grijalva is not happy about the cave-in by Senate Democrats. “We don’t get anything from the deal,” she insists. “There was a lot of suffering that people went through…during the shutdown. But overwhelmingly, I heard from people, ‘Keep fighting.’” The deal that eight Democrats struck to reopen government in return for a promised Senate vote on extending Obamacare subsidies is meaningless, as Grijalva sees it, because “there is no reciprocal commitment from Speaker Johnson for the House” to hold a vote.

The second storyline has loomed larger in the public imagination. Once she is sworn in, Grijalva has pledged to become the 218th member to sign a “discharge petition” in the House that would force a vote on legislation to make the Epstein Files public. This is a bipartisan push to publish the government’s unclassified documents relating to the dead sex trafficker and his powerful allies in business and politics. Epstein’s longtime former associates included a now-ex British prince, Andrew, and the current president of the United States. (A batch of Epstein documents already released by the House revealed Trump allegedly sent Epstein a disturbing 50th birthday note that referred to a shared interest in a “wonderful secret.” Trump has denied sending the missive bearing his signature.)

Grijalva tells The Contrarian that she was initially skeptical that the Epstein Files were the true reason she wasn’t being sworn in. “I thought, ‘Well, that’s crazy.’ It’s very conspiracy-theory, right?” But as the weeks dragged out, the congresswoman-elect came around to the idea that keeping a lid on the Epstein scandal offered key context for the Speaker’s baffling decision to sideline her. “I do believe that they’re connected,” she says. “You have to wonder what’s in there, and what’s going to be released.”

Grijalva emphasizes that any intrigue surrounding the files is secondary to “justice for the survivors and consequences for people who committed crimes against children and women. If my signature helps expedite that,” she says, “then I’m happy to do it.” But she insists that her top priority is providing representation to her district: “While Epstein has been a focal point as to why many believe, including myself, that this delay that has happened in my swearing in, what’s really important is the work that is coming for southern Arizona.”

Arizona’s seventh district encompasses much of Tucson and part of the Phoenix metro. It includes Yuma, the nation’s lettuce capital; native tribal lands; and three ports of entry to Mexico. The district is nearly 60 percent Hispanic. Grijalva says she wants to stand up and “fight for the issues that we care about: which is public education, our environment, affordability, and protecting our democracy.”

Grijalva told The Contrarian on Monday that, while she expects to be sworn in this week, she still had not been given any details from Johnson. She added: “I don’t hold my breath anymore about when things will happen.”

Taking her oath of office will bring an end to an absurd abuse of power. Grijalva began requesting a swearing in ceremony shortly after winning her election in September. Although Johnson remained in D.C. during much of the record-breaking government shutdown, the Speaker refused to conduct his ceremonial duty. He offered a bizarre array of excuses, including claiming that he was following precedent set by Nancy Pelosi (he was not) or somehow doing Grijalva a favor by making sure enjoyed the “pomp and circumstance” of a swearing in during House session. (Grijalva explicitly waived any right to pomp.)

As the impasse stretched to late October, the representative-elect and Arizona’s secretary of state filed a lawsuit claiming that Johnson had “unlawfully interfered with Ms. Grijalva’s constitutional right to take office.” It accused Johnson of refusing to seat Grijalva to avoid “the release of the Epstein files and/or to strengthen his hand in the ongoing budget and appropriations negotiations.” It argued that the Speaker does not have the power to “thwart the peoples’ choice of who should represent them in Congress by denying them representation.”

Grijalva tells The Contrarian that part of her work in Congress will be to pursue legislation to make sure that such an arbitrary delay can’t happen in the future. “This obstruction in swearing me in really did highlight a lot of cracks in the foundation. I had Republicans and Democrats come up to me saying, ‘What they’re doing to you is really not OK.’” She is vowing to pursue legislation “in order to ensure this doesn’t happen to another person.”

The confusion and delay has been hard on the district’s residents, including folks who keep showing up at her father’s old district headquarters. “My dad served this community for 22 years. People are still going to his office and they’re still pulling on the door. I run into people at the grocery store, and they’re like, ‘Mi hijita… I went to your office, and you’re not there.’”

The representative-elect says she’s excited to live up to the expectations of her constituents. “They are used to having a Grijalva have their back,” she says. “That’s what I want to be able to do for this community. And that is what I am looking forward to.”

Watch the full interview between Tim and Rep. Elect Grijalva here.

Tim Dickinson is the Senior Political Writer for The Contrarian