A top Democrat has accused Donald Trump of “panicking” after the US president told his fellow Republicans in Congress to vote for the release of files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, in a sudden reversal of his earlier position.
Robert Garcia, the ranking member on of the House oversight committee, which released a tranche of new Epstein documents last week, said that Trump “has tried everything to kill our Jeffrey Epstein investigation”.
“Now [Trump’s] panicking and has realized he is about to lose this Epstein vote to force the Department of Justice to release the files,” Garcia said in a statement.
“Let’s be crystal clear: Trump has the power to release all the files today,” Garcia added. “But instead, he wants to continue this cover-up and launch bogus new investigations to deflect and slow down our investigation. It won’t work. We will get justice for the survivors.”
Trump’s post on his Truth Social website declaring he now wanted the House to vote in favor of releasing justice department documents in the Epstein case came after the House speaker, Mike Johnson, said previously that he believed a vote should help put to rest allegations “that he [Trump] has something to do with it”.
Late on Sunday, Trump wrote: “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files because we have nothing to hide.” He added: “And it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party.”
Trump’s reversal came only after it became clear he was likely to lose the vote, with bipartisan support growing among House members. Thomas Massie, a Republican who led the petition alongside Ro Khanna, a Democract, said on Sunday “100 or more” Republicans could vote yes.
The White House has struggled to contain suspicion within Trump’s usually loyal Make America Great Again (Maga) base that the administration is hiding details of Epstein’s crimes to protect the rich elite with whom the financier associated, including Trump.
Despite continued releases of files by Republicans this year, including a cache of more than 20,000 pages that were published last week, pressure has grown to disclose more information from Epstein’s estate, as well as FBI investigation documents.
The US House of Representatives is expected to vote on the legislation regarding the release of more Epstein files this week, possibly as soon as Tuesday.
Several of Jeffrey Epstein’s survivors appeared in a new public service announcement encouraging House lawmakers to vote yes. Produced by the anti-trafficking organization World Without Exploitation, the video shows survivors holding pictures of their younger selves. “It’s time to bring the secrets out of the shadows,” one says. It ends with text that reads: “Five administrations and we’re still in the dark.”
Although Trump and Epstein were photographed together decades ago, the president has said the two men fell out before Epstein’s convictions. Emails released last week by a House committee showed Epstein, who killed himself in jail in 2019, had said Trump “knew about the girls”, though it was not clear what that phrase meant.
Critics had previously accused Trump of trying to conceal details – something the president denies – by hoping to block the vote, which has divided his typically loyal Republican party.
“The House Oversight Committee can have whatever they are legally entitled to, I DON’T CARE! All I do care about is that Republicans get BACK ON POINT, which is the Economy, ‘Affordability’”, Trump wrote in his post on Truth Social.
The political crisis has led to fissures in sections of the usually loyal Republican party.
Trump withdrew his support on Friday for Marjorie Taylor Greene, a representative of Georgia and long one of his staunchest supporters in Congress, after her criticism of Republicans on certain issues, including the handling of the Epstein files.
Earlier that day, Greene had told Politico: “Releasing the Epstein files is the easiest thing in the world. Just release it all. Let the American people sort through every bit of it, and, you know, support the victims. That’s just like the most common sense, easiest thing in the world. But to spend any effort trying to stop it makes – it just doesn’t make sense to me.”
The US president later called Greene “wacky” and a “traitor”.
Greene said that Trump’s online criticism had unleashed a surge of threats directed at her. Trump rejected that, saying: “I don’t think her life is in danger ... I don’t think anybody cares about her.”
Trump, who has often dismissed the Epstein files as a Democratic smear campaign, last week instructed the justice department to investigate prominent Democrats’ ties to Epstein. Massie later challenged Trump over the fresh investigation, questioning whether the president was making a “last-ditch effort” to keep the full files on Epstein from becoming public..
“There’s still time for him to be the hero,” Massie said of Trump.
Khanna and Massie introduced a petition in July to force a vote on their bill, the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The effort was backed by all House Democrats and four Republicans: Massie, Greene, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Nancy Mace of South Carolina.
Minutes after the Democrat Adelita Grijalva of Arizona was sworn into office on Wednesday, she signed her name to the Epstein petition, pushing it to the magic number of 218 – a majority in the 435-member House.
Johnson said following Grijalva’s swearing-in that he would expedite the petition process to bring a vote on the bill to the House floor this week. The bill will now almost certainly pass the House, but its future in the Senate – where Republicans hold a 53–47 majority – is unclear.
Asked in September whether the Senate would take up the Epstein bill if it passed the House, the Republican majority leader, John Thune, said, “I can’t comment on that at this point” and added that the justice department “has already released tons of files related to this matter”.
“I trust them in terms of having the confidence that they’ll get as much information out there as possible in a way that protects the rights of the victims,” Thune said.
