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WASHINGTON (CN) — The House is poised this week to take a major step toward shedding light on the government’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, as lawmakers vote on a measure that would direct the White House to publish a trove of documents related to the late financier and convicted sex trafficker.
It’s a move months in the making, and one that over the weekend got an unexpected political boost from one of its most ardent opponents — President Donald Trump himself.
A bipartisan group of House lawmakers last week finally secured the required signatures to force a vote on a resolution aimed at demanding the Trump administration release government documents concerning its investigation into the late Epstein. The House could take up the measure, offered by California Representative Ro Khanna and Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, as early as Tuesday.
Democrats have seized on the so-called Epstein files as a potent political tool against Trump, who had a relationship with the late financier and pedophile in the 1990s and who has been named repeatedly in the few Epstein documents published so far. The Trump administration has for months been reticent to unilaterally release files related to the case.
The White House last week also appeared to be pushing hard on Republican lawmakers who signed the petition to bring an Epstein files vote to the House floor, such as Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert, who reportedly met with administration officials but refused to recant her support.
Trump himself has repeatedly referred to intrigue around the Epstein files as a “hoax” and denied any knowledge of the late financier’s crimes. But in a post Sunday night on his social media platform Truth Social, he reversed course on the House effort to publish Epstein documents.
“As I said on Friday night aboard Air Force Once to the Fake News Media, House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from the Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown,’” the president wrote.
But Trump also claimed that his fellow Republicans were falling into a “trap” by demanding the release of more Epstein files, pointing out that the Justice Department had already published “tens of thousand of pages” on its investigation.
The agency produced a limited number of Epstein documents earlier this year, but much of the information in that release had already been made public. The Justice Department over the summer said that it would not publish any more Epstein files, despite Attorney General Pam Bondi’s claim that new documents were sitting on her desk.
Trump added Sunday that the House Oversight Committee, which has been tasked with securing Epstein documents, could have “whatever they are legally entitled to.”
“Nobody cared about Jeffrey Epstein when he was alive and, if the Democrats had anything, they would have released it before our Landslide Election Victory,” the president wrote.
Trump’s comments also come just days after Bondi announced the Justice Department would investigate former President Bill Clinton and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, among others, over their ties to Epstein. The probe comes on the heels of a massive document drop published by the Oversight Committee last week which included emails between Epstein and Summers.
The former Clinton administration official and Obama administration economic adviser has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the Epstein case.
Some of the emails released last week, however, also name Trump. In one message, Epstein wrote that the president “knew about the girls,” and in another he appeared to suggest that he had information about Trump, saying he was “able to take him down.”
But the late financier’s emails also did not directly associate Trump with any wrongdoing.
As the House prepares to vote on the Epstein files resolution this week, some Democrats slammed the president for his apparent about-face on the measure. Some questioned why he would not simply instruct his administration to release the requested documents unilaterally.
“Trump knew he was going to lose this vote badly so he’s trying to save face,” Massachusetts Representative Ayanna Pressley said Monday. “He should direct the DOJ to release all the Epstein files NOW without waiting for a vote in Congress.”
Khanna, meanwhile, thanked the president for what he called his “complete and total endorsement” of his proposed resolution.
“I believe that by standing for principle, Americans will have your back and the mightiest will see the way,” the California congressman wrote in a post on X. “This is how we start to heal the chasm in our nation.”
If the Epstein files resolution clears the House — where it is expected to — it must then survive a vote in the closely divided Senate. It’s unclear yet whether the measure has enough support to pass the upper chamber.
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