Trump asks House Republicans to vote to release Epstein files

U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday called on Republican lawmakers to vote to release all documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a vote scheduled for Tuesday despite the president’s previous opposition.

“House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move past this Democratic hoax perpetrated by radical left lunatics in order to deflect from the great success of the Republican Party,” Trump wrote in a message posted on his social media network, Truth Social.

Congress will vote on Tuesday to demand the publication of the still-classified files related to Epstein, the financier who died by suicide in 2019, after House Democrats last week released three new emails from the convicted sex offender. In one of them, Epstein writes that Trump “spent hours” at the financier’s home with one of his victims.

Trump, who was a friend of the financier and later promised during his campaign to release all the files in the case concerning his sex crimes, including soliciting minors for prostitution, said in his message that “the Department of Justice has already turned over tens of thousands of pages to the public regarding ‘Epstein,’ are looking at various Democrat operatives (Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, Larry Summers, etc.) and their relationship to Epstein, and the House Oversight Committee can have whatever they are legally entitled to.”

The U.S. president denied any criminal ties to Epstein on Friday, claiming: “Jeffrey Epstein and I had a very bad relationship for many years. But he also saw strength, because I was president, so he dictated a couple of memos to himself.”

In this context, Trump now maintains that “nobody cared about Epstein when he was alive” and that if the Democrats had anything, they would have released it before his “landslide” 2024 election victory. “Some ‘members’ of the Republican Party are being ‘used,’ and we can’t let that happen. Let’s start talking about the Republican Party’s record setting achievements, and let’s not fall into the Epstein ‘trap,’” he concluded in his post on Sunday.

The shift in the president’s position comes after a petition to force a vote on declassifying the files reached the necessary support, with the backing of some Republicans. Several members of that group have predicted that, if it reaches the floor, dozens of Republicans would vote in favor, with Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie saying the number could reach 100 — almost half of the 219 who make up the Republican caucus. If the House of Representatives approves the measure, it would still need to be approved by the Senate and signed by Trump for the publication to take effect. Last week, these two steps still seemed uncertain, but Trump’s statement suggests they may occur. In the Senate, the proposal could need up to 13 Republican votes.

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