WASHINGTON (AP) — The House voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill Tuesday 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 if it also passes the Senate.
The bill passed 427-1, with the only no vote coming from Rep. Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican who is a fervent supporter of Trump. He also chairs a subcommittee that initiated a subpoena on the Justice Department for the Epstein files.
Democratic Rep. Jared Golden from Maine’s 2nd District said the files “should obviously be released. And it never should have been this hard.”
Tuesday’s vote 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.
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.
Pushing for more accountability, the survivors of Epstein’s abuse cast the current effort in Congress as a step towards accountability for Epstein’s crimes after years of government failure under multiple presidential administrations.
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. On Monday, he told reporters that Epstein was connected to more Democrats and that he didn’t want the Epstein files to “detract from the great success of the Republican Party.”
Still, many in the Republican base have continued to demand the release of the files. Adding to that pressure, several 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 political conflicts that surround it,” said Jena-Lisa Jones, one of the survivors.
She added that she had voted for Trump, but 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 also 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 apparent 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. It’s one of the reasons behind her prominent split with the president.
“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 is moving to hold 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 planned to vote for the bill. “None of us want to go on record and in any way be accused of not being for maximum transparency,” he added.
Meanwhile, House Democrats celebrated the vote as a rare win for the minority.
“It’s a complete and total surrender, because as Democrats we made clear from the very beginning, the survivors and the American people deserve full and complete transparency as it relates to the lives that were ruined by Jeffrey Epstein,” said House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries.
What will the Senate do?
It’s not clear how the Senate will handle the bill.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has previously been circumspect when asked about the legislation and instead said he trusted the Justice Department to release information on the Epstein investigation.
But what the Justice Department has released so far under Trump was mostly already public. The bill would go further, forcing 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. Information about Epstein’s victims or continuing federal investigations would be allowed to be redacted, but not information due to “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.”
Johnson also said he wants to see the Senate amend the bill to protect the information of “victims and whistleblowers.”
But 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” and said 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.”
Story by Stephen Groves, Associated Press. Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Joey Cappelletti and Matt Brown, and BDN writer Ethan Andrews contributed to this report.
