Amid a flood of Steve Bannon-sourced stories (in the NYT,  WaPo, and CNN) claiming Trump has solved his Jeffrey Epstein problem and a parallel flood of document dumps — including the MLK files (over the family’s objections) and a DOJ IG Report showing that Peter Strzok was not permitted to investigate Hillary Clinton as aggressively as he wanted — attempting to reclaim Trump’s authority to grab and redirect attention — Mike Johnson face-planted.

Johnson was considering his meaningless, non-binding measure calling on Trump to release the Epstein files he already promised to release, but when asked by CNN, he said he would instead give Trump “space” to deal with his Jeffrey Epstein problem.

Johnson told CNN on Monday the full House would not vote on a pending measure from members of his own party – a non-binding resolution calling for the release of additional Epstein files – before the chamber’s August recess, which is slated to begin at week’s end.

“My belief is we need the administration to have the space to do what it is doing, and if further congressional action is necessary or appropriate, then we’ll look at that, but I don’t think we’re at that point right now, because we agree with the president,” he said.

I mean, Mike Johnson could lend Trump Denny Hastert’s old office to provide space to work through his pedophile problem. Is that what he meant?

It got worse. Because Tom Massie — running around the House with a binder mocking Pam Bondi’s own — was unified with Democrats behind a binding measure, Republicans couldn’t even get a rule passed so as to do something productive with their last week of session.

So instead they quit.

The House Rules Committee came to a standstill Monday night as GOP leaders struggled to contain rank-and-file Republicans and their Democratic allies clamoring for a floor vote to compel the publication of materials related to the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender.

Committee Democrats had planned to force a vote that evening on legislation that would call for the release of the materials, as the panel worked to tee up floor consideration on a slate of unrelated bills. It was poised to be a repeat of what transpired last Thursday inside Rules, which gummed up the works for several hours.

But rather than this time work through the Democratic disruption, Republicans chose instead Monday to recess the rest of the Rules meeting altogether, with House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) saying it was “unlikely” that the panel would reconvene this week at all. Later, lawmakers said there were no plans to return at all.

This is a Big Fucking Deal.

Because Trump is running scared, the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein has — however temporarily — deprived Trump of his majority in the House.