The bill could compel the Department of Justice to release all files related to the late convicted sex offender
The US House and Senate have voted overwhelmingly in favour of a measure that could force the release of all files relating to the criminal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
There were 427 votes in favour of passing the Epstein Files Transparency Act in the House, with one representative voting against.
The Senate also agreed to a unanimous consent request from Democratic minority leader, Chuck Schumer, to pass the bill.
In the face of mounting pressure from Democrats and Republicans, US President Donald Trump on Sunday urged his party’s lawmakers to back the release of the documents. The move marked a sudden and unexpected reversal of his previous opposition to the documents’ release.
“We have an opportunity to get this bill done today and have it on the president’s desk to be signed into law tonight, we should seize the opportunity,” Schumer said.
No senator objected to his request. The bill will now head to Donald Trump to sign.
Passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act would compel the Department of Justice (DoJ) to make publicly available, “in a searchable and downloadable format”, all its files relating to Epstein within 30 days.
The files are expected to include flight logs, materials relating to his death in custody and documents related to people and companies with connections to the disgraced financier, along with photos and videos taken from his residences.
Asked on Monday whether he would approve of the bill, Trump said: “Sure I would.”
He went on to describe the scandal around the convicted paedophile, which has as a “Democrat problem”.
“The Democrats were Epstein’s friends, all of them. It’s a hoax, the whole thing is a hoax.”
Last week, the US President directed the DoJ to investigate, among others, former president Bill Clinton, former treasury secretary Lawrence Summers and the US bank JPMorgan Chase for their alleged connections with Epstein.
While Trump has claimed he would sign the bill, the ongoing investigations could be cited by his administration as legal justification for withholding portions of the files.
Republican Clay Higgins, a fervent Trump supporter, was the sole legislator to vote against the bill.
A post on his X account said: “I have been a principled ‘NO’ on this bill from the beginning”.
He added that the bill “abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America.
“As written, this bill reveals and injures thousands of innocent people – witnesses, people who provided alibis, family members, etc.
“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.”
The family of Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent accusers who died by suicide earlier this year, emerged from the vote in tears.
Her brother, Sky Roberts, called on Trump not to delay releasing the files. “The reality is, right now, he could release the files today if he really wanted to,” he said.
“So, if he really cares about it, why even send it to the Senate? Why don’t we just go ahead and release the files?”
Jennifer Freeman, lawyer for Epstein survivors, said the vote was an “important step toward long overdue accountability and transparency”.
She added: “Lawmakers have a responsibility to the survivors who have suffered at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and to the American people who deserve the truth. Survivors have been kept in the dark, their cries unheard, their questions ignored, and those who enabled these crimes have not been held to account.”
Republican representative Thomas Massie said he was embarrassed for the GOP’s handling of the vote.
Massie said he and three Republican colleagues – Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert – “have had to drag our party to this floor today to even vote on this”.
Before Trump’s U-turn on the release of the files, the four representatives were the only Republicans to join Democrats in signing onto a discharge petition that forced a vote the matter.
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Massie said the three women have been threatened and intimidated, “and not by the far left”, but rather “by people in our own party”.
Epstein finally pleaded guilty to two charges in 2008 – one count of soliciting prostitution and one count of soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18 – and was sentenced to 18 months in jail, most of which he served in a work-release programme.
He was rearrested in 2019 and charged with sex trafficking minors.
