Congress acts swiftly to force release of Epstein files, sending bill to Trump

WASHINGTON (AP) — Both the House and Senate acted decisively Tuesday to pass a bill to force the Justice Department to publicly release its files on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a remarkable display of approval for an effort that had struggled for months to overcome opposition from President Donald Trump and Republican leadership.

When a small, bipartisan group of House lawmakers introduced a petition in July to maneuver around House Speaker Mike Johnson’s control of which bills reach the House floor, it appeared a longshot effort — especially as Trump urged his supporters to dismiss the matter as a “hoax.”

But both Trump and Johnson failed in their efforts to prevent the vote. Now the president has bowed to the growing momentum behind the bill and even said he will sign it. Just hours after the House passed the bill, the Senate agreed to pass the bill with unanimous consent once it is sent to the Senate.

The bill passed the House 427-1, with the only no vote coming from Rep. Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican who is a fervent supporter of Trump. He said in a statement that he opposed the bill because it could release information on innocent people mentioned in the federal investigation.

The decisive, bipartisan work in Congress Tuesday further showed the pressure mounting on lawmakers and the Trump administration to meet long-held demands that the Justice Department release its case files on Epstein, a well-connected financier who killed himself in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial in 2019 on charges he sexually abused and trafficked underage girls.

“These women have fought the most horrific fight that no woman should have to fight. And they did it by banding together and never giving up,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as she stood with some of the abuse survivors outside the Capitol Tuesday morning.

“That’s what we did by fighting so hard against the most powerful people in the world, even the president of the United States, in order to make this vote happen today,” added Greene, a Georgia Republican and longtime Trump loyalist.

The bill’s passage would be a pivotal moment in a yearslong push by the survivors for accountability for Epstein’s abuse and reckoning over how law enforcement officials failed to act under multiple presidential administrations.

A separate investigation conducted by the House Oversight Committee has released thousands of pages of emails and other documents from Epstein’s estate, showing his connections to global leaders, Wall Street powerbrokers, influential political figures and Trump himself. In the United Kingdom, King Charles III stripped his disgraced brother Prince Andrew of his remaining titles and evicted him from his royal residence after pressure to act over his relationship with Epstein.

The bill forces the release within 30 days of all files and communications related to Epstein, as well as any information about the investigation into his death in federal prison. It would allow the Justice Department to redact information about Epstein’s victims or continuing federal investigations, but not information due to “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.”

Trump’s reversal on the Epstein files

Trump has said he cut ties with Epstein years ago, but tried for months to move past the demands for disclosure.

Still, many in the Republican base have continued to demand the release of the files. Adding to that pressure, survivors of Epstein’s abuse rallied outside the Capitol Tuesday morning. Bundled in jackets against the November chill and holding photos of themselves as teenagers, they recounted their stories of abuse.

“We are exhausted from surviving the trauma and then surviving the politics that swirl around it,” said one of the survivors.

Another, Jena-Lisa Jones, said she had voted for Trump and had a message for the president: “I beg you Donald Trump, please stop making this political.”

The group of women also met with Johnson and rallied outside the Capitol in September, but have had to wait months for the vote.

That’s because Johnson kept the House closed for legislative business for nearly two months and refused to swear-in Democratic Rep. Adelita Grijalva of Arizona during the government shutdown. After winning a special election on Sept. 23, Grijalva had pledged to provide the crucial 218th vote to the petition for the Epstein files bill. But only after she was sworn into office last week could she sign her name to the discharge petition to give it majority support in the 435-member House.

It quickly became obvious the bill would pass, and both Johnson and Trump began to fold. Trump on Sunday said Republicans should vote for the bill.

Yet Greene told reporters that Trump’s decision to fight the bill had betrayed his Make America Great Again political movement.

“Watching this turn into a fight has ripped MAGA apart,” she said.

How Johnson is handling the bill

Rather than waiting until next week for the discharge position to officially take effect, Johnson held the vote under a procedure that requires a two-thirds majority.

But Johnson also spent a morning news conference listing off problems that he sees with the legislation. He argued that the bill could have unintended consequences by disclosing parts of federal investigations that are usually kept private, including information on victims.

“This is a raw and obvious political exercise,” Johnson said.

Still, he voted for the bill. “None of us want to go on record and in any way be accused of not being for maximum transparency,” he explained.

Meanwhile, House Democrats celebrated the vote as a rare win. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries described it as “a complete and total surrender.”

Senate plans to act quickly

Even as the bill cleared his chamber, Johnson pressed for the Senate to amend the bill to protect the information of “victims and whistleblowers.” But Senate Majority Leader John Thune showed little interest in that notion, saying he doubted that “amending it is going to be in the cards.”

Thune said he would quickly assess senators’ views on the bill to see if there were any objections. He said the bill could be brought forward in the Senate as soon as Tuesday evening and almost certainly by the end of the week.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer also indicated he would attempt to pass the bill Tuesday.

“The American people have waited long enough,” he said.

Meanwhile, the bipartisan pair who sponsored the bill, Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., warned senators against doing anything that would “muck it up,” saying they would face the same public uproar that forced both Trump and Johnson to back down.

“We’ve needlessly dragged this out for four months,” Massie said, adding that those raising problems with the bill “are afraid that people will be embarrassed. Well, that’s the whole point here.”

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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Joey Cappelletti, Matt Brown, Lisa Mascaro and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

Stephen Groves, The Associated Press