US President Donald Trump on Sunday called on Republican lawmakers to vote to release all documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a vote expected on 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 crazies to deviate from the great success of the Republican Party,” Trump wrote in a message posted on his social network, Truth Social.
Congress will vote on Tuesday to seek release of still-classified files related to Epstein, the financier who committed suicide in 2019, after House Democrats released three new emails from the convicted sex offender last week. In one of them, Epstein writes that Trump “spent hours” at the financier’s home with one of his victims.
Trump, who was friends with the financier and later promised during his campaign to release all case files regarding his sex crimes, including the solicitation of minors into prostitution, said in his message that “the Department of Justice has already turned over tens of thousands of pages to the public on ‘Epstein,’ is looking into various Democratic operatives (Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, Larry Summers, etc.) and their relationship with Epstein, and the House Oversight Committee can have whatever they want” are legally entitled.”
The US president on Friday denied any criminal links to Epstein, saying: “Jeffrey Epstein and I had a very bad relationship for many years. But he also saw the strength, because I was president, so he dictated a couple of memos to himself.”
In this context, Trump now claims that “no one cared about Epstein when he was alive” and that if the Democrats had anything, they would have released him before his “landslide” election victory in 2024. “Some ‘members’ of the Republican Party are being ‘used’ and we cannot allow this to happen. Let’s start talking about the record results of the Republican Party and not fall into Epstein’s ‘trap’,” he concluded in his post on Sunday.
The change in the president’s position comes after a petition to force a vote on declassifying the files gained much-needed support, with the backing of some Republicans. Several members of that group predicted that if it reached the floor, dozens of Republicans would vote for it, with Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie saying the number could reach 100 — nearly half of the 219 who make up the Republican caucus. If the House of Representatives approves the measure, it will 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 could happen. In the Senate, the proposal could require up to 13 Republican votes.
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