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On Tuesday, the House of Representatives and the Senate passed legislation requiring the release of Department of Justice (DOJ) files on the investigation into accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Although Epstein died by suicide in 2019, the files are still relevant given his many connections to prominent figures, including politicians like former President Bill Clinton and current President Donald Trump. After campaigning in 2024 on releasing the files — capitalizing on conspiracy theories that energized his supporters — Trump did an about-face on his promise earlier this year, shortly after Attorney General Pam Bondi told the press she supposedly had the files on her desk, including a list of clients who were part of Epstein’s criminal enterprise.
After months of delay, Bondi reversed her statement, claiming that such a list didn’t exist and that further investigations into Epstein or those who associated with him weren’t necessary. The issue has hounded Trump ever since, with voters across the political spectrum (including his own base) demanding the release of the DOJ files.
For months afterward, Trump harshly criticized anyone who pushed the issue, including members of his own party, frequently describing the matter as a “hoax” against him. Public pressure, as well as dissent from congressional Republicans in support of a bipartisan discharge petition to force a vote in the House, eventually led to Trump calling for the release of the files this past weekend.
In a Truth Social post, Trump continued to disparage the focus on the Epstein files, stating:
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.
Prior to his change of heart, Trump also called on Bondi to open investigations into people formerly connected to Epstein, omitting himself and other right-wing figures.
With both houses of Congress giving near-unanimous support to the measure — an outcome that seemed like an impossibility just weeks ago — the bill now advances to the desk of the president, who could sign it into law as soon as Wednesday.
The bill would require the DOJ to release, within an online searchable database, “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” relating to Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, including his flight logs, travel records, and other information that was collected during the investigation into his child sex trafficking operation. The database would have to be available “not later than 30 days” after enactment, the bill stipulates.
Despite the extraordinary bipartisan effort that led the bill to Trump’s desk, some critics, including one of the bill’s authors, worry he will try to disrupt the release of some information, particularly as it pertains to his former connections to Epstein.
Part of the bill, for example, allows the attorney general to withhold or redact portions of the records that “would jeopardize an active federal investigation.” Trump’s order last week to investigate certain figures could feasibly allow Bondi to keep portions of the Epstein files, which would have been available before that order was made, away from the public eye.
The bill also allows the withholding of materials from the Epstein investigation “under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy.” Given that Trump frequently describes opposition to his policies as threats to national security, and regularly describes people who criticize him as treasonous, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that he will use this option to his advantage, especially given his propensity to issue executive orders based on questionable legal reasoning.
Political observers, journalists, and lawmakers are skeptical that Trump’s intention to sign the bill into law is genuine.
“Anyone expecting full transparency is likely to be disappointed,” Political Wire’s Taegan Goddard wrote. “There is simply no mechanism for Congress — or anyone else — to verify whether the Trump administration withholds, buries, or scrubs the most damaging material.”
Goddard continued:
[Trump previously saying] that lawmakers ‘can have whatever they are legally entitled to’ is less a promise of disclosure than a warning label. ‘Legally entitled to’ is his big loophole. This White House routinely offers eccentric, self-serving interpretations of the law, especially when the stakes involve Trump’s own exposure. In a political environment where guardrails have been dismantled and enforcement is optional, don’t get your expectations up.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), who co-authored the bipartisan legislation along with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California), expressed worry that the administration would take advantage of the legislation’s generous rules on withholding documents due to recently initiated inquiries.
“I’m concerned that, now he’s opening a flurry of investigations, and I believe they may be trying to use those investigations as a predicate for not releasing the files,” Massie told reporters. “That’s my concern.”
Mark Epstein, brother to Jefferey Epstein, commented on why the administration is now open to releasing the files.
“I’ve been recently told the reason they’re going to be releasing these things, and the reason for the flip is that they’re sanitizing these files,” he said.
Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan also weighed in on the matter.
“How can we not entertain conspiracy theories about the death of the world’s most famous child sex offender when we see the world’s most powerful man frantically spending weeks pressuring members of his own party to vote against the release of all the records, throwing his own loyal allies under the bus in the process, and ordering blatantly partisan investigations into only his political opponents? … How can we not entertain conspiracy theories about a dead pedophile who was a close friend of the president, especially when that president is also a convicted criminal himself and was found liable for sexual abuse by a jury of his peers in New York?” Hasan wrote in a recent column.
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