Topline
House lawmakers are expected to approve legislation this week that would force the Trump administration to release its files on Jeffrey Epstein, potentially teeing up the documents to be released within weeks—though while President Donald Trump said Monday he’d sign the legislation if it comes to his desk, it remains to be seen how the Senate will proceed.
President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House on Nov. 17 in Washington, D.C.
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Key Facts
The House is expected to vote Tuesday on the bill that would require the Department of Justice to release its full files on Epstein within 30 days of the bill becoming law.
Trump encouraged House Republicans to sign the bill in a social media post Sunday night—marking an about-face after the president reportedly tried to keep the measure from coming up for a vote—and told reporters Monday he’ll sign the bill if it comes to his desk.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said last week the measure would be voted on this week after Rep. Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz., became the 218th signature—exactly one vote required for a majority—on a discharge petition for the bill, allowing the legislation to skip the traditional process of being approved by a House committee first and going straight to the House floor.
Grijalva signed the petition after she was finally sworn into the House, seven weeks after winning a special election, a delay Democrats claimed was to keep the Epstein petition from moving forward.
The bill is widely expected to pass the House: Reports suggested more than 100 House Republicans planned to vote for the bill, even before Trump flipflopped on social media Sunday, saying the House GOP should back the legislation because “it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax.”
The House passing the bill and Trump supporting it will also likely put pressure on the Senate to take up the legislation, though it remains unclear how exactly Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., plans to handle a vote on the measure.
Crucial Quote
“Sure, I would. Let the Senate look at it, let anybody look at it,” Trump said Monday when asked whether he’d sign the Epstein legislation. The president continued to decry the Epstein controversy as a “hoax” that would primarily damage Democrats, adding he doesn’t want people to “talk about it too much” and “take it away from really the greatness of what the Republican Party has accomplished.” Trump, who was known to be friends with Epstein before having a falling out in the early 2000s, also further distanced himself from the late financier Monday, claiming that while Democrats he’s singled out for their ties to Epstein were “with him all the time, I wasn’t. I wasn’t at all.”