The bill still needs to be approved by the Senate, but the House vote was a bipartisan rejection of President Donald Trump, who had urged his party to move on from the Epstein case and vote against the resolution before reversing course over the weekend when it became clear the resolution would pass.
The vote, with 427 in favor and 1 against, was nearly unanimous, as only Representative Clay Higgins (R-La.) voted against. The House of Representatives said on Tuesday it wants to find out what Donald Trump is hiding.
Hours later, Trump reversed his stance on the vote and wrote on Truth Social that "Republicans should vote to make the Epstein files public, because we have nothing to hide and it's time to move on from this Democratic hoax." The 180-degree turn came after Trump's efforts to kill the discharge petition—a mechanism allowing House members to force a vote on the files despite leaders' objections—failed.
Now that Trump says he supports the petition, it's worth remembering that—just as he can order the Justice Department to investigate his political rivals—he could order Bondi to release the files without Congress's intervention.
Following the House vote, the bill will now go to the Senate, where—if leaders decide to bring it to the floor—only a simple majority will be needed for it to pass.
The law would allow the Justice Department to redact sensitive information related to the identity of survivors, as well as material showing sexual abuse of minors, other violent crimes, or material that could jeopardize an ongoing investigation.
It's important to note that some evidence in the DOJ's Epstein files cannot be disclosed without a court order, primarily the sealed grand jury transcripts. Courts have recently rejected the DOJ's requests to declassify the grand jury testimony related to the Epstein case, though it's not uncommon for grand jury transcripts to eventually become public.
If Congress has to force the Justice Department to publish all these materials, where do things like Trump's page in Epstein's "little black book" and the Epstein emails published earlier this month come from? They come from a completely independent source: the Epstein estate.
House Oversight Committee Democrats, led by Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), have been working with the Epstein estate, as well as survivors, to publish the evidence held by representatives of the late sex offender.
Among them is the so-called "little black book," a collection of over 50 greeting letters that included a lewd missive from Trump, and thousands of emails between Epstein, Maxwell, and others, which the Oversight Committee published last week.
Since Epstein's death in prison, only his longtime associate and companion—Ghislaine Maxwell—has been tried and convicted in connection with the trafficking ring run by Epstein. Epstein died by suicide in federal custody in 2019, shortly after being charged with sex trafficking of minors in a separate investigation.
