Trump signs bill to release Epstein files

On Wednesday, Donald Trump signed a bill ordering the Department of Justice to release the case files on the millionaire financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Or, at least, that’s what he said he did, 24 hours after the bill was overwhelmingly approved by both the House and the Senate. The U.S. president chose to sign it without witnesses or the usual ceremony he favors in such cases. He made the announcement on his social media platform, Truth Social, after 9 p.m., at the end of a day in which, unusually for him, he avoided the press.

In his message, Trump said little about the law, the crimes of his former friend, or the victims. Instead, he took the opportunity to recall that Epstein was arrested and died in a maximum-security cell in Manhattan (the coroner ruled it was suicide) under his first presidency; he also said that Epstein was “a lifelong Democrat”; and he takes credit for the passage of the bill, because last Sunday he gave his people permission to support it in both chambers.

“Democrats have used the Epstein issue, which affects them far more than the Republican Party, in order to try and distract from our AMAZING Victories,” he wrote on Truth Social, before going on to list all those achievements with a mix of exaggeration, lies and half-truths.

In his message, Trump cited former president Bill Clinton, former Treasury secretary Larry Summers, who has been removed or stepped down from several boards following revelations about his email exchanges with the late financier; Democratic donor Reid Hoffman; House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, whom Trump accused of asking Epstein for campaign donations after the latter was charged, and Democratic Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett, another figure who has been exposed by recent emails.

The announcement ends months in which Trump repeatedly refused to authorize the release of Epstein’s files in the hope that a storm that had been raging especially hard among his MAGA supporters would subside on its own. The signing also starts the clock ticking for the Department of Justice, which has 30 days to release all investigative files relating to Epstein’s crimes and the connections that may be revealed within his circle of wealthy and powerful friends.

The material slated for disclosure is a vast and comprehensive collection of files that comprise millions of pages, including flight records, personal communications, internal reports, metadata, immunity agreements, contracts with the financier’s employees, and emails.

Exceptions to disclosure

But the legislation includes exceptions that allow the Department of Justice to withhold some information, a fact that could turn this new declassification into yet another chapter in the history of accumulated disappointments for those who want to clarify once and for all how far Epstein’s sex trafficking network reached and who participated in it.

The law requires that released material be easy to access and download. But it authorizes the Department of Justice to redact information that could compromise victims, material containing descriptions of child sex abuse, graphic images, or information that could jeopardize an ongoing investigation. Bondi is required to justify such censorship, and Congress is required to draft an additional report detailing the redacted content within 15 days of publication.

The victims, who gathered at the Capitol on Tuesday to witness the passage of the new law, said they feared that the Trump administration would release overly redacted material or cling to the existence of these ongoing investigations to avoid releasing documents.

Washington veterans remember another declassification: the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. Congress then ordered the gradual release of documents related to Kennedy’s assassination and established similar protocols for managing classified information. Many of those papers were released, although successive administrations invoked national security exemptions to delay their full disclosure. In 2017, Trump ordered the release of thousands of documents on JFK and added more this year, but even now, more than 30 years later, there are still materials waiting to see the light of day.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition