President Trump arrives back at the White House on Sunday night after spending the weekend in West Palm Beach, Florida. Photo by Ron Sachs/UPI | License Photo
President Donald Trump unexpectedly dropped his opposition to the release of the Epstein files, saying Republicans should now support a motion to make the documents public in an upcoming vote in the House on Tuesday.
House Republicans should vote for the bill which would require the government to publish all documents it holds on Epstein and the criminal investigations into him that “because we have nothing to hide,” Trump said Sunday.
“It’s time to move on from this 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,'” Trump said.
“The Department of Justice has already turned over tens of thousands of pages to the Public on ‘Epstein,’ are looking at various Democrat operatives (Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, Larry Summers, etc.) and their relationship to Epstein, and the House Oversight Committee can have whatever they are legally entitled to, I DON’T CARE!”
CBS News said it had information that Republican leaders planned to schedule a full vote on the legislation, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, on Tuesday.
Trump’s reversal came amid indications that as many as 100 Republicans would back efforts being led by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., to force a House vote on Epstein and after he withdrew his backing for former staunch ally Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., calling her a “ranting lunatic.”
Massie, who introduced the bill in July, warned that the record of how lawmakers voted on the issue would long outlive Trump’s presidency.
Ahead of Trump’s U-turn, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said he believed there were “lots of votes” for the bill, including from Republicans, and that the House needed to “get this done and move on.”
“There’s nothing to hide,” he added.
The bill was expected to pass in the House, but it was less certain if it would clear the Senate.
It was also unclear how swiftly the Justice Department might release the files or whether the vote might be academic, given Trump’s backing for the move.
On Friday, Trump ordered the Justice Department to launch an investigation into alleged ties between Epstein and former President Bill Clinton and other high-profile Democrats whose names came up in a tranche of more than 20,000 documents and emails released Wednesday by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee.
The document dump was in response to the release by Democrats on the committee of three emails — roundly criticized by Republicans as selective “cherry picking” — linking Trump to Epstein.
One of the leaked emails, between Epstein and his associate, Ghislane Maxwell, refers to Trump as the “dog that hasn’t barked,” and states that he spent hours at Epstein’s house with one of Epstein’s victims, the identity of whom was redacted.
Republicans, including White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt, have said the redacted name referred to the late Virginia Giuffre.
She has consistently stated that she never saw Trump doing anything wrong.
Trump has stated that he broke off contact with Epstein years before his conviction in 2008 and knew nothing about his criminal behavior.
Clinton has categorically denied knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.
Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who joined Massie on a petition credited with forcing Johnson to bring the vote to the floor, told NBC on Sunday that the effort was not about Trump, but about justice.
“What we’re asking for is justice for the survivors. So, it’s not about Donald Trump. I don’t even know how involved Trump was. There are a lot of other people who are involved who have to be held accountable.”
