In a reversal of his previous stance, President Donald Trump has told US House Republicans they should vote to release the files relating to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Pressure has been mounting for some time, with claims of a cover-up coming from both Republicans and Democrats.
Recent releases of some documents by the US House Oversight Committee have suggested President Trump’s relationship with Epstein was at times closer than he admits, leading some to posit his previous reluctance to release the files was on account of his own inclusion in them.
Writing on social media on Sunday night, Trump said: “We have nothing to hide, 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.”
Democrats and a growing number of lawmakers in Trump’s own party have been pushing a measure that would force the Justice Department to make more documents from the case public.
The president’s shift appears to be an implicit acknowledgement that they have enough votes to pass the House.
Trump’s statement followed a fierce fight within his own party over the files, including a public and increasingly bitter split with Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, previously one of his most vehement supporters.
Trump publicly called it quits with Greene last week and said he would endorse a challenger against her in 2026 “if the right person runs”.
Greene said of the fallout, “Unfortunately, it has all come down to the Epstein files.”
She said the country deserves transparency on the issue and that Trump’s criticism of her is confusing because the women she has talked to say he did nothing wrong.
“I have no idea what’s in the files. I can’t even guess. But that is the questions everyone is asking, is, why fight this so hard?” Greene said.
In one final post about the Georgia representative, Trump wrote: “The fact is, nobody cares about this Traitor to our Country!”
Whilst the president’s shift may be an acknowledgement supporters of the measure have enough votes to pass the House, the vote has an unclear future in the Senate, where the Republicans have a 53-47 majority.
Trump’s climbdown is a rare example of the largely unchecked president backtracking because of opposition within his own party.
“I DON’T CARE!” Trump wrote in his social media post.
“All I do care about is that Republicans get BACK ON POINT.”
Lawmakers who support the bill have been predicting a big win in the House this week with a “deluge of Republicans” voting for it, bucking the party’s leadership, and the president.
In attempts to quash the proposal, Trump even reached out to two of the Republican lawmakers who signed it.
Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert, met last week with administration officials in the White House Situation Room to discuss dropping her support for the file’s release.
At the time of meeting, she was one of four Republicans who had signed the petition calling for the file’s release.
It was reported the meeting did not cause her to withdraw her support.
The bill, should it pass, will force the Justice Department to release all files and communications related to Epstein, as well as any information about the investigation into his death in federal prison.
Information about Epstein’s victims or ongoing federal investigations would be allowed to be redacted.
“There could be 100 or more” votes from Republicans, said Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, among the lawmakers discussing the legislation on Sunday news show appearances.
“I’m hoping to get a veto-proof majority on this legislation when it comes up for a vote.”
Speaker Mike Johnson now seems to expect the House will decisively back the Epstein bill, saying: “We’ll just get this done and move it on. There’s nothing to hide,” adding that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been releasing “far more information than the discharge petition, their little gambit”.
The vote comes at a time when new documents are raising fresh questions about Epstein and his associates, including a 2019 email that Epstein wrote to a journalist that said Trump “knew about the girls.”
The White House has accused Democrats of selectively leaking the emails to smear the Republican president.
Johnson said Trump’s association with Epstein is well-established and the president’s name was included in records that his own Justice Department released in February as part of an effort to satisfy public interest in information from the sex-trafficking investigation.
Trump has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein and the mere inclusion of someone’s name in files from the investigation does not imply otherwise.
Epstein, who killed himself in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial, also had many prominent acquaintances in political and celebrity circles besides Trump.
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