The US House of Representatives has voted overwhelmingly in favour of making the Epstein files public.
The “Epstein files” refer to the cache of evidence held against the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which the US Justice Department currently has jurisdiction over.
The bill, having been voted in, will now go to the Senate for a vote before reaching the office of President Trump for final approval.
It is an outcome President Donald Trump had fought for months and comes just two days after he ended his opposition with an ubrupt U-turn.
Previously there had been robust efforts from the president, and several high-profile members of Republican leadership, to block files from ever seeing daylight.
The success of the bill is the result of efforts of a small bipartisan group of lawmakers, who worked to navigate around House Speaker Mike Johnson’s control of which bills reach the House floor.
It was an uphill battle for the group, who were fighting against the president himself, who was pushing his supporters to dismiss the matter as a “hoax”.
The House on Tuesday voted 427-1 in favour of the bill. Due to the overwhelming support for the bill, Trump has agreed that he will sign it in if it passes the next stage - the Senate.
The president had previously robustly opposed all efforts to release the Epstein files after it was suggested that Trump himself might be implicated within them.
Last week, 20,000 pages of documents, some directly mentioning Trump, were released by the House Oversight Committee. Being named in the files is not evidence of any wrongdoing.
Trump has maintained that he cut ties with Epstein several years ago, but for months has been dodging demands for disclosure.
He claimed on Monday that Epstein was more well-connected to Democrats, and that he didn’t want the Epstein files to “detract from the great success of the Republican Party.”
