Trump, in reversal, now says House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files as bill tees up for Tuesday: How we got here

More than six years after his jail-cell death, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is back in the news as the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives prepares to vote later this week on a measure that would compel the Justice Department to release all of its so-called Epstein files.

On Sunday, GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged that there would be “lots of votes” in favor of the bill on his side of the aisle. Hours later, President Trump — who had been publicly and privately pressuring Republican lawmakers to vote no — suddenly reversed course, writing on his Truth Social network that “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide.”

“I DON’T CARE!” Trump added. “All I do care about is that Republicans get BACK ON POINT.”

On Monday, the president said he would sign the measure if Congress passes it.

“Sure I would,” Trump told reporters. “Let the Senate look at it. Let anybody look at it.”

Why are the Epstein files so controversial? And what’s next in the push to release them? Here’s everything you need to know to make sense of the story.

Why the Epstein files matter

In 2019, Epstein was arrested by federal agents and accused of paying dozens of teenage girls, some as young as 14, to perform sex acts. (Epstein previously pleaded guilty and was convicted in 2008 by a Florida state court of procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute.)

In August 2019, Epstein was found dead in his jail cell in Manhattan while awaiting trial.

Since then, the disgraced financier has been the focus of conspiracy theories that claim he was murdered to conceal the names of powerful people on a secret “client list” — theories that Trump fueled by questioning the nature of Epstein’s death. During the 2024 campaign, Trump said he would “probably” release additional government files on Epstein. Then, after returning to the White House, he directed the Justice Department to conduct an exhaustive review of the evidence it had collected (including more than 100,000 pages of physical records, grand-jury testimony and digital materials recovered from devices seized at Epstein’s properties).

In July, the DOJ and FBI released a two-page joint memo concluding that Epstein had “committed suicide in his cell” and compiled no “client list” — echoing previous findings by the Biden administration. The move enraged some Trump loyalists, who accused the president and his administration of breaking their promise to release all of the Epstein files. It also put the spotlight back on Trump’s own relationship with Epstein.

What Trump has said about Epstein (and the files)

The key factor that has transformed the Epstein files from a fringe interest to a mainstream preoccupation is Trump’s shifting stance on releasing them — especially in light of his own long history with Epstein.

“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years,” Trump told New York magazine for a 2002 profile of Epstein (who, like Trump, also owned homes in New York City and Palm Beach, Fla.) “Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

The following year, Trump allegedly wrote Epstein a suggestive birthday letter that read, in part, “a pal is a wonderful thing.”

(When House Democrats released the birthday letter earlier this year, Trump dismissed it as a “FAKE” and a “hoax,” then sued the Wall Street Journal — the first paper to report on its existence — for defamation. The Journal responded with a motion to dismiss, arguing that its initial reporting had been confirmed by the subsequent congressional release of the document.)

Sometime after 2004 — the year the two engaged in a bidding war over a $40 million Palm Beach mansion — Trump and Epstein’s relationship soured, and by 2007, Trump had reportedly banned Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club.

After Epstein was arrested in 2019, during Trump’s first term in office, the president said he was “not a fan.”

“I had a falling out with him a long time ago,” Trump told reporters at the time. “I don’t think I’ve spoken to him for 15 years.”

A month later, Epstein died in federal custody. Trump called for a “full investigation” into Epstein’s death and directed then-Attorney General William Barr to lead the probe. Barr eventually agreed with the conclusion of the New York City medical examiner, who ruled the death a suicide.

While campaigning in 2020 — and, later, in 2024 — Trump repeatedly speculated about the nature of Epstein’s death, and last year, in response to a question from Fox News, he said he would declassify the Epstein files if reelected.

“Yeah, yeah, I would,” Trump replied. “It’d be interesting to find out what happened there, because that was a weird situation, and the cameras didn’t happen to be working, etc., etc. But, yeah, I’d go a long way toward that one.”

In a subsequent podcast interview with Lex Fridman, Trump called speculation about an Epstein client list “very interesting” and said he’d “probably” release it.

“I’d be inclined to do the Epstein,” Trump said. “I’d have no problem with it.”

Why the full Epstein files haven’t been released yet

In February, Trump’s Justice Department released what it described as the “first phase of the declassified Epstein files” — 341 pages of material that was mostly available already, including flight logs from Epstein’s plane and a redacted version of his contacts book.

The selective release only provoked more backlash.

In May, Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump that his name appears multiple times in the files, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. (The paper noted that being named in the files is not evidence of wrongdoing.) Bondi also told Trump that she did not plan to release any additional documents, the Journal reported, because the remaining material contained child pornography and victims’ personal information. Trump reportedly said he would defer to the Justice Department’s decision.

A White House spokesman called the Wall Street Journal story “fake,” although an unnamed official speaking to Reuters said the administration did not dispute that Trump’s name was included.

After Bondi announced her decision in July, Trump began dismissing the Epstein files as a “Democrat hoax” and criticizing Republicans who continued to call for their full release.

“The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects,” Trump wrote last Wednesday on Truth Social. “Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap. … There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else.”

Yet four House Republicans — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky — spent months pushing back, insisting that releasing the Epstein files was the “right thing to do for the victims” and “for the country,” as Greene recently put it on X.

“Americans deserve transparency,” she added.

What’s next

In July, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that “we should put everything out there and let the people decide it.”

“I’m for transparency,” he told a right-wing podcaster.

A few days later, however, Johnson cut short the week’s legislative business and sent the House home early for the summer to avoid holding a vote on the Epstein files. Then he refused for more than seven weeks to seat Democratic Rep. Adelita Grijalva of Arizona, who won a special election on Sept. 23 and vowed to cast the tie-breaking 218th vote in favor of releasing the files.

As soon as Grijalva was finally seated last Wednesday, she voted — along with the rest of the House Democratic caucus and the four Republicans mentioned above — to force a full floor vote on releasing the files (via a legislative maneuver known as a “discharge petition”).

The same day, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released a new tranche of emails provided to the panel by Epstein’s estate — including one from 2019 in which Epstein wrote that Trump “knew about the girls.” House Republicans responded by releasing an additional 20,000 documents from the Epstein estate.

None of these documents are part of the Justice Department’s “Epstein files.”

The House is now expected to vote Tuesday on a bill that would require “the Department of Justice (DOJ) to publish (in a searchable and downloadable format) all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in DOJ’s possession that relate to the investigation and prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein.”

Massie told ABC News on Sunday that “100 or more” Republicans could vote for the measure.

The margin of Tuesday’s vote is important. In order to become law, the bill would still need at least 13 Republican backers in the Senate to achieve a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority. The more House Republicans vote in favor of releasing the full Epstein files, the more pressure they’ll put on their Senate counterparts to follow suit.

Assuming the measure survives the Senate — a big if — it would then go to the White House for Trump’s signature. Over the weekend, the president attacked Greene as a “ranting lunatic” and Massie as “a LOSER” — but by Monday, he was saying he would sign the bill.

Trump is “coming after me hard to make an example to scare all the other Republicans before next weeks vote to release the Epstein files,” Greene alleged on social media. “It’s astonishing really how hard he’s fighting to stop the Epstein files from coming out that he actually goes to this level.”

It would take 290 votes in the House and 67 votes in the Senate to override a presidential veto.

Meanwhile, Trump on Friday ordered Bondi to investigate several Democrats who were mentioned in Epstein’s emails. Bondi immediately complied, naming a special prosecutor to lead the inquiry four months after formally declaring that nothing in the Epstein files warranted further investigation.

Even if the Epstein measure passes this week, the DOJ is still “permitted to withhold certain information such as the personal information of victims and materials that would jeopardize an active federal investigation,” according to the text of the bill itself.