Trump backs vote to release Epstein files
By Francesca Chambres
USA Today
WASHINGTON - with the House of Representatives all but certain to approve a measure this week [11/18/2025] that would force the Justice Department to release all of its records on disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, President Donald Trump had a sudden change of heart.
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Trump reversed course, allowing his party to back the bill he had spent months trying to bury, breaking with a former ally to the process.
..... "We have nothing to hide, and 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," Trump wrote on Truth Social November 16. [2025]
..... The House is set to vote November 18 [2025] on the bill requiring the DOJ to release every documents it has on Epstein and his former associate Ghislaine Maxwell. The measure is expected to pass the lower chamber with bipartisan support. it would still need to clear the Senate, where Democrats have a 47-seat minority. They would need the help of 13 Republicans to clear a filibuster.
..... Trump has mot said whether he would sign the bill that forces his administration's hand, although he said on Truth Social that as far as he's concerned, the House Oversight Committee" can have whatever they are legally entitled to."
..... "I DON'T CARE! All I do care about is that Republicans get Back ON POINT," Trumps aid, invoking his administration;s campaign to lower costs for Americans.
..... Trump's about-face was an acknowledgment of the stark political reality before him: Scores of Republicans were preparing to vote for the bill. A discharge petition ensuring a House vote received the necessary 218 signatures last week. [11/14/2025]
Four of the signatories were Republicans.
..... "I think we could have a deluge of Republicans. There could be 100 or more. I'm hoping to get a veto-proof majority on this legislation when it comes up for a vote," Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, the bill's Republican sponsor, said on ABC News; "This Week" earlier in the day.
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House Speaker Mike Johnson conceded on "Fox News Sunday" that the bill was likely to have plenty of support and cast the vote as a way to weaponize accusations against Trump.
..... Trump rode on Epstein's plane and was friends whit the financier, until they had a falling out. The president says he cut ties with Epstein for stealing young female workers form him; the White House says Epstein was banned from Trump's resort because he was a "creep." The president has denied any worngdoing and ordered the DOJ and the FBI to investigate Democrats with ties to the convicted sex offender last week. [11/14/2025]
..... Epstein died by suicide in jail while he was awaiting trial. Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking minors and is serving a 20-year prison sentence in connection with the case. Trump's administration approved her transfer in August [2025] from a maximum security prison in Florida to a lower-security facility in Texas.
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Representative Ro Khanna, the lead Democrat on the bill, said November 16 [2025] that he would be hooding a news conference with Epstein survivors at the U.S. Capitol on November 18 [2025] with Massie and Republican Georgia Representative Marjoirie Taylor Greene ahead of the anticipated vote.