WASHINGTON — Congress on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly to pass legislation to compel the Justice Department to release all its records related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — a major victory for lawmakers in both parties who’ve been leading the push for months.
As the final vote tally in the House, 427-1, was read, several Epstein survivors who were sitting in the gallery embraced each other and loud cheers went up through the chamber. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., was the only lawmaker to vote no.
Just hours later, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., headed to the floor and requested unanimous consent that the measure be passed in the upper chamber once the bill is sent over from the House.
Not a single senator objected.
It means that once the paperwork is sent from the House to the Senate, the bill will be sent straight to Trump, who has vowed to sign it into law.
The measure, which last week secured enough bipartisan support to head straight to the House floor, got a big boost over the weekend, when Trump reversed his position and urged Republicans to support it.
Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif. — the bipartisan duo who co-authored the legislation and successfully forced the vote on the House floor, despite leadership’s objections — had spent the past few days trying to drive up the vote tally to put pressure on the Senate.
The votes in both chambers exceeded both their expectations.
At a candlelight vigil with Epstein survivors and lawmakers outside the Capitol Tuesday night, survivor Annie Farmer invoked the memory of Virginia Giuffre, the Epstein survivor and sexual abuse advocate who committed suicide in April at the age of 41. Her memoir, “Nobody’s Girl,” was posthumously published last month.
“She immediately rallied all of us together and had this vision for what could happen, what people could learn from this, what she wanted to do with this platform and push that forward in such a brave way,” Farmer said, breaking down in tears.
“I feel like she’s here with us. I feel like she can see this. So thank you, Virginia, for all that you’ve done for us,” she continued.
Epstein survivors speak out ahead of House vote on Epstein files release
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The bill would require the attorney general to release in a searchable and downloadable format “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” related to Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, flight logs or travel records, people and entities connected with Epstein and internal emails, notes and other internal Justice Department communications.
Those records would need to be released “not later than 30 days” after enactment of the law.
The legislation says the attorney general may withhold or redact any information that identifies victims or would jeopardize an active federal investigation.
Ahead of the House vote, Massie, Khanna and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., held an emotional news conference outside the Capitol with more than a dozen Epstein survivors, urging senators to quickly take up the bill.
“You had Jeffrey Epstein, who literally set up an island of rape — a rape island — and you had rich and powerful men, some of the richest people in the world, who thought that they could hang out with bankers, buy off politicians and abuse and rape America’s girls with no consequence,” Khanna told reporters Tuesday.
“Because survivors spoke up, because of their courage, the truth is finally going to come out,” he added. “And when it comes out, this country is really going to have a moral reckoning.”
Earlier in the day, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had been working to convince the Senate to amend language in the bill to better protect the identities of victims. Higgins, the lone no vote, wrote on X that the bill, as written, could reveal “thousands of innocent people — witnesses, people who provided alibis, family members, etc.”
But Massie urged his fellow Republicans not to “muck it up in the Senate.” And in the end, with such a large vote in the House, no GOP senator dared stand in the way.
“We fought the president, the attorney general, the FBI director, the speaker of the House and the vice president to get this win,” Massie said, adding that opponents deserved some “credit” because they ultimately came around to the legislation. “They are finally on the side of justice.”
Why Trump reversed course
Momentum on the Epstein discharge petition had been building in the House, which allowed rank-and-file members to circumvent leadership and force a vote.
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All House Democrats were on board, and after half the House signed the discharge petition to force a vote, a deluge of Republicans began announcing they would vote for it.
Trump and the White House had worked behind the scenes to stop the effort, trying to pressure a handful of GOP women to drop off the petition.
But with the writing on the wall, Trump abruptly reversed course Sunday night, posting on Truth Social that House Republicans should vote for the bill. On Friday, Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Epstein’s ties to prominent Democrats and financial institutions.
Trump, who had supported releasing the Epstein files before his re-election last year, vowed Monday to sign the legislation should it reach his desk, which he said would allow the GOP to turn the page and focus on the economy.
“Some of the people that we mentioned are being looked at very seriously for their relationship to Jeffrey Epstein, but they were with him all the time — I wasn’t. I wasn’t at all,” Trump said in the Oval Office.
“What I just don’t want Epstein to do is detract from the great success of the Republican Party, including the fact that the Democrats are totally blamed for the shutdown,” he continued.
Standing with fellow Epstein survivors Tuesday, Jena-Lisa Jones lashed out at Trump over the new DOJ probe.
“I beg you, President Trump: Please stop making this political,” Jones said. “It is not about you, President Trump. You are our president. Please start acting like it. Show some class, show some real leadership, show that you actually care about the people other than yourself.”
Jones said she voted for Trump. “Your behavior on this issue has been a national embarrassment,” she said.
Marjorie Taylor Greene speaks at press conference with Epstein victims
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Asked about the criticism, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said: “Democrats and the media knew about Epstein and his victims for years and did nothing to help them while President Trump was calling for transparency, and is now delivering on it with thousands of pages of documents as part of the ongoing Oversight investigation.”
A conservative Trump ally in the House told NBC News that Republicans have been widely frustrated with the White House’s dismissive handling of the Epstein saga and have privately encouraged it to shift strategy — which was communicated as recently as Friday, days before Trump flipped on the issue.
The White House was also warned that there would be mass Republican defections on the House floor.
Thousands of documents released
The Justice Department has already turned over tens of thousands of documents from the Epstein investigation to the House Oversight Committee, which is conducting its own probe and has made many of those records public.
In addition, Democrats on the Oversight Committee released a series of emails last week from Epstein to Maxwell and journalist Michael Wolff that refer to Trump, which Epstein’s estate turned over in response to a subpoena. In one 2019 email, Epstein wrote of Trump, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop,” but he didn’t accuse Trump of any wrongdoing.
Trump has consistently denied involvement in any of Epstein’s crimes. The two men had socialized in the 1980s and the 1990s, including at a 1992 party at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where video shows them discussing women. But Trump and Epstein had a falling-out in the 2000s, when Trump accused Epstein of hiring away girls and young women from his resort’s spa. Trump said he banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago.
In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to Florida state charges of soliciting prostitution with a minor. In July 2019, the Justice Department charged him with sex trafficking of minors. A month later, authorities said, Epstein killed himself in his jail cell while he was awaiting trial.
Johnson has argued for months that the Epstein legislation isn’t needed because the Oversight Committee has been releasing documents to the public. He dodged questions Monday about Trump’s about-face and his conversations with the president.
“He’s never had anything to hide. He and I had the same concern — that we wanted to ensure that victims of these heinous crimes are completely protected from disclosure, those who don’t want their names out there,” Johnson told reporters. “And I’m not sure the discharge petition does that, and that’s part of the problem.”
