In a dramatic reversal that has sent ripples through Washington, President Donald Trump on Sunday night called on House Republicans to vote in favor of releasing files linked to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. This move, coming after weeks of resistance and political wrangling, marks a significant pivot for the president, who until recently had been actively working to prevent such a vote from taking place.
Trump’s announcement, made via a post on his Truth Social platform late Sunday, was characteristically blunt. “As I said on Friday night aboard Air Force One to the Fake News Media, House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because 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, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown,’” Trump wrote, according to multiple outlets including CBS and The Hill.
The president’s shift comes at a politically fraught moment. Just days earlier, a discharge petition—a rare procedural maneuver allowing the minority party to force a vote on legislation the majority seeks to avoid—had reached the crucial threshold of 218 signatures. The final signature came when Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) was sworn into Congress on Wednesday, after weeks of delay by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) amid a protracted government shutdown. With the petition now valid, House GOP leaders have scheduled a floor vote for Tuesday, November 18, 2025.
Notably, the petition was not a purely Democratic effort. Four House Republicans—Reps. Thomas Massie (KY), Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA), Lauren Boebert (CO), and Nancy Mace (SC)—joined all Democrats in signing on, demonstrating the bipartisan appetite for transparency around the Epstein files. According to Rep. Massie, as reported by The Hill, “100 GOP members could back it,” a prediction echoed by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), the primary Democratic sponsor of the bill, who told reporters, “I believe we’re going to get 40, 50 Republicans voting with us on the release.”
The legislation at the heart of this political drama is the Epstein Files Transparency Act, first introduced in July 2025 by Khanna and Massie. The bill, as described by CBS and The New York Times, calls for the Justice Department to release a vast trove of documents related to all investigations into Epstein and his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of sex trafficking in 2021. This includes flight logs, travel records, names of individuals and entities referenced in any Epstein case, internal Justice Department communications, as well as records concerning any destruction or concealment of evidence and documentation about Epstein’s controversial death in 2019 at a Manhattan correctional facility.
If passed by the House, the measure would still face significant hurdles. To become law, it must clear the Senate—where at least 13 Republican senators would need to join all Democrats to overcome a filibuster—and then be signed by President Trump. The Senate’s willingness to take up the bill remains uncertain, with observers noting that even if all 47 Democrats support it, the threshold for passage is high.
Trump’s about-face appears to be a strategic calculation. In the days leading up to his announcement, he and his allies had reportedly reached out to Republican lawmakers who had signed the discharge petition, urging them to withdraw their support. According to The Hill and NewsNation, some were even summoned to the White House Situation Room for discussions with the attorney general and FBI director. The prospect of dozens of Republicans defying the president on the House floor was shaping up to be a political embarrassment—a risk Trump seems to have sidestepped by embracing the release at the eleventh hour.
Pressure for transparency had been mounting from both sides of the aisle, especially after the House Oversight Committee released a cache of emails from Epstein’s estate last week. Among them was a message in which Epstein claimed that Trump “knew about the girls,” a claim that reignited scrutiny of the president’s past relationship with the disgraced financier. Trump has consistently maintained that he cut ties with Epstein years ago and has not been accused of any wrongdoing. Nonetheless, the renewed attention on his connections prompted a flurry of public statements and, ultimately, his call for full disclosure.
In his Truth Social posts, Trump was quick to frame the controversy as a partisan distraction. “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!” he wrote, as reported by The Daily Beast and others. “All I do care about is that Republicans get BACK ON POINT, which is the Economy.”
He continued, “Nobody cared about Jeffrey Epstein when he was alive and, if the Democrats had anything, they would have released it before our Landslide Election Victory. Some ‘members’ of the Republican Party are being ‘used,’ and we can’t let that happen. Let’s start talking about the Republican Party’s Record Setting Achievements, and not fall into the Epstein ‘TRAP,’ which is actually a curse on the Democrats, not us.”
Yet, Trump did not shy away from criticizing members of his own party, particularly Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. In another Truth Social post, he referred to her disparagingly and accused her of being the “cause of all her own problems.” This public rebuke followed his earlier withdrawal of support for Greene and Rep. Massie, both of whom had backed the discharge petition. Trump had even endorsed primary challengers against them, underscoring the deep divisions within the GOP over the Epstein files issue.
For Democrats, the push for transparency is about more than political point-scoring. As Rep. Khanna stated on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “There is a group of rich and powerful men who abused young girls. It’s the one thing this country agrees was horrible.” Khanna and others believe that releasing all relevant files is a matter of public interest and could even improve Trump’s public perception, should the records exonerate him.
Whether the files will indeed be released—and what they might reveal—remains to be seen. For now, with the scheduled House vote and mounting bipartisan support, the nation is poised for what could be one of the most consequential disclosures of the year. The political stakes are high, the alliances uneasy, and the public’s demand for answers as fervent as ever.
As the House prepares for its vote, all eyes are on Capitol Hill. The outcome could reshape not just the ongoing debate over Epstein’s legacy, but the broader conversation about transparency, accountability, and the limits of political loyalty in Washington.
