Both Republicans and Democrats threw their support behind a bill on Tuesday that aims to compel the release of files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, ending a months-long stand-off between Congress and the White House.
President Donald Trump, whose past association with the New York financier who died in federal custody in 2019 has sparked a flurry of speculation, had fought the release of the files for most of this year. On Sunday he suddenly changed course and endorsed the effort.
“We fought the president, the attorney general, the FBI director, the speaker of the House and the vice president to get this win,” Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said Tuesday morning at a news conference with Epstein survivors outside the Capitol. “They’re on our side today, though, so let’s give them some credit as well. They are finally on the side of justice.”
Almost all House Republicans voted in favor of the measure, which was brought to the floor against the wishes of leadership after a procedural gambit led by Massie and Ro Khanna, D-Calif. The final tally was 427-1.
Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., the lone House member to vote against the bill, posted on the social platform X, “If enacted in its current form, this type of broad reveal of criminal investigative files, released to a rabid media, will absolutely result in innocent people being hurt.”
Hours later, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., requested unanimous consent to pass the legislation without amendment as soon as it is sent over from the House. No senators objected. Once passed, the bill will be cleared for the president.
“This isn’t about Democrats versus Republicans, or about Congress versus the president. This is about giving the American people the transparency they’ve been crying for,” Schumer said.
The bill would direct the Department of Justice to make many records related to Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell publicly available within 30 days of enactment, with exceptions for material related to ongoing investigations.
Trump has said he will sign the measure when it reaches his desk, though advocates caution it could dislodge fewer documents than many hope, depending on how officials choose to comply.
Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who led the Senate version of the bill, urged Trump not to delay the process any further.
“Release these files now. Release them now. Sign this bill and release the files right away,” he said from the Senate floor.
‘A political exercise’
Trump’s change of tone came only as the House effort seemed destined to succeed.
Three Republicans in addition to Massie had signed on to a discharge petition, a tactical maneuver that allows rank-and-file lawmakers to circumvent House leadership and force a floor vote with enough support. The petition notched its decisive 218th signature last week when Rep. Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz., was sworn in.
Johnson brought the bill up under a fast-track process known as suspension of the rules, anticipating that more than the required two-thirds of the House would back it, but called it a “political show vote” forced by the Democrats that was delaying other more urgent business. Johnson chose to keep the House out of session for nearly two months during the government shutdown, as Democrats charged he was stalling to avoid the Epstein issue.
“Clearly this is a political exercise for Democrats and a few others, sadly. And it is as deceitful and dishonest as their pointless stunt to shut down the government,” Johnson said at a news conference, calling out colleagues who had little to say about Epstein while President Joe Biden was in the White House.
While those who have called for more transparency into Epstein’s dealings claimed a win on Tuesday, the saga is not over yet, and it remains to be seen how the Trump Justice Department would comply with the measure’s directives if it is enacted.
Trump, who was at one time friends with Epstein, has fought to keep a lid on the documents, even after suggesting during his reelection campaign that he was open to declassifying some of them. He’s referred to the fervor around Epstein as a “hoax” and led a pressure campaign to get some Republican members — notably Reps. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and Nancy Mace, R-S.C. — to remove their support from the discharge petition.
Trump used some of the same language even in his Sunday night post instructing Republicans to vote in favor of the bill.
“House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
He also picked a fight with his former ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., calling her a traitor in a series of TruthSocial posts over the weekend. Greene, who has said she still supports the president, claimed his words resulted in an uptick in threats against her.
“I fought for him, for the policies and for America First,” Greene said Tuesday at the news conference with Epstein survivors. “And he called me a traitor for standing with these women.”
Meanwhile, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee plans to continue its own probe and has released a trove of documents from the Epstein estate, including emails from Epstein suggesting Trump “knew about the girls.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters last week that the emails did not implicate Trump in any wrongdoing.
“What President Trump has always said is that he was from Palm Beach, and so was Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein was a member at Mar-a-Lago until President Trump kicked him out because Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile and he was a creep,” Leavitt said.
Ongoing investigations
Trump told reporters on Monday that he would sign the bill if it made it to his desk, but some wonder how many documents would actually see the light of day, depending on how the administration interprets its exceptions.
While the bill would prohibit the Justice Department from keeping back any documents simply to avoid potential embarrassment, political sensitivity or reputational harm, it does allow for the redaction of victims’ personal information and the withholding of material that depicts child sexual abuse or that would jeopardize an active federal investigation.
Trump noted in his post supporting the bill that the Justice Department is “looking at various Democrat operatives” and their relationship to Epstein, and said the House panel can “have whatever they are legally entitled to.”
Days earlier, the president in a separate post said he would be asking Attorney General Pamela Bondi to open an investigation into Epstein’s “involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions.”
And Bondi, despite a July memo from the FBI that a review of Epstein material “did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties,” replied to that request in a post saying she had asked a U.S. attorney in New York to “take the lead” and “pursue this with urgency and integrity.”
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., appearing on MS NOW, referred to that exchange and said his “gut hunch” is that Bondi “will promptly say, ‘Oh, no, no, there’s an ongoing investigation, we can’t disclose any of this.’ And the president will back that up.”
Daniel Hillburn and Victor Feldman contributed to this report.
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