By Sarah Ferris, Annie Grayer, Manu Raju

(CNN) — On his first full day back in Washington, House Speaker Mike Johnson sat for hours in a closed-door interview with six women who say they were abused by the late Jeffrey Epstein.

Johnson’s presence in the room on the first day of a frenetically busy September on Capitol Hill underscores how significant the issue of Epstein’s past crimes has become within the GOP.

The next day, Johnson and his House GOP took a symbolic step on the floor to voice support for their own committee’s investigation into Epstein’s crimes. But he and the GOP conference have, so far, been opposed to a far more significant measure to force President Donald Trump’s administration to release more records related to the case. Trump’s own team has phoned Republicans urging them not to support that measure.

And Johnson — like his members — is under intense pressure to meet the base’s demands for transparency without going against the wishes of the president, whose inner circle has attempted to quiet this summer’s political firestorm over Epstein.

“The fact that Mike Johnson sat there for two and a half hours — we’re serious about this,” House Oversight Chairman James Comer told reporters after leaving the meeting Tuesday. “We’re going to do everything we can to make this right.”

Johnson himself told reporters the testimonials he heard were “heartbreaking and infuriating” and said “there were tears in the room. There was outrage.”

Five weeks ago, Johnson and his leadership team had hoped that sending lawmakers home early to their districts for their August recess would diffuse tension around the issue. But the return of Congress to Washington showed that the pressure on GOP leaders has only continued to build, with Johnson maintaining the full House does not need to pass a measure demanding the administration release all Epstein-related files as a handful of his own GOP colleagues have sought.

That pressure on Republicans dramatically increased on Wednesday, when Rep. Thomas Massie and his Democratic counterpart in the effort, Rep. Ro Khanna of California, held a high-profile press conference in which nearly a dozen Epstein’s abuse survivors spoke about their experiences, some for the first time publicly.

Massie and Khanna are leading a push to force the full House to vote on a resolution that would require Trump’s Justice Department to turn over all documents related to Epstein or his crimes. Under their maneuver, known as a discharge petition, Massie would need just five more Republicans to force the bill to the floor since every Democrat is expected to sign on.

So far, three other Republicans have signed on: Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Lauren Boebert of Colorado. Other Republicans who have supported the underlying bill — including Reps. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, Eli Crane of Arizona and Tim Burchett of Tennessee — were either noncommittal or suggested they would not support the discharge petition when asked by CNN this week.

Johnson on Wednesday dismissed it as a “poorly written” petition that does not do enough to protect victims and said he supports the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the government’s mishandling of the Epstein case.

“The Oversight Committee is gathering more documents than are even anticipated in the discharge petition,” Johnson said, pointing to the “treasure trove of documents” currently held by the Epstein estate that would not be included in the discharge petition.

The House Oversight Committee has been leading an investigation into Epstein after some Republicans joined with Democrats to compel a subpoena to the Justice Department for records. The panel on Tuesday night released more than 33,000 pages related to the case – all of the subpoenaed documents the panel had obtained earlier this summer.

But the public release of information has not stopped the push for more transparency that has ratcheted up the pressure on Johnson. Massie and Democrats said nearly all of those documents had already been made public as part of various court cases and that it did not alter their push for their own Epstein measure.

As part of its investigation, the Oversight Committee hosted a meeting on Tuesday with several survivors who are planning to speak at Wednesday’s press conference. In that closed-door meeting, several of them shared chilling stories of abuse. Mace, one of the lawmakers in the room who has spoken out about being raped age 16, left the meeting in tears.

Inside the room, one survivor said the women had been told by Epstein that they were disposable and threatened against coming forward, according to a person in the room who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting. The women were told if they went to police that Epstein had powerful friends, that person said.

If the bipartisan Epstein resolution does pass the House, its fate is unclear in the Senate. But it would be an extraordinary move by a GOP-controlled Congress to take against a president of its own party.

To prevent such an escalation, Johnson and the White House are attempting to sell their GOP members on an alternative path. They have backed a non-binding resolution that encourages the Oversight Committee’s investigation, which the House formally adopted on Wednesday. And Johnson stressed the importance of the work of that panel, in part by sitting in on one of the sessions himself.

“I sat by him in our meeting and listened to his compassion for these survivors. I listened to his questions,” Greene said of Johnson as she left the meeting. “I’ve listened to some of his plans that he has going forward. I do think he’s doing a great job there.”

Even so, Greene is one of the three Republicans so far willing to buck her leadership on the discharge petition. She said it was nothing against Johnson personally, but that she decided: “I just think we need to do everything we can to bring it out.”

Inside the House GOP conference, some Republicans are privately dreading weeks of questions about the Epstein matter and would rather move onto issues like appropriations, tariffs or Russian sanctions, according to multiple lawmakers and senior aides. But many of those GOP lawmakers also realize that there is a small but vocal faction of their party that is deeply invested in getting more answers on Epstein and that they can’t be seen as dropping the issue.

Democrats, meanwhile, are accusing Johnson of attempting to stonewall further investigations in Congress.

Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico told reporters after the meeting that Johnson was advocating that the investigation should remain within the Oversight panel — rather than expanding the probe to include more committees.

“In the room with six victims of sexual violence by Jeffrey Epstein, it was suggested by Democrats that this be investigated using the full force of every committee here in Congress. And the speaker ended by saying he didn’t think that was necessary. He’d like to just keep it in the Oversight Committee,” Stansbury said. “That is where the speaker actually chose to end this conversation.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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