Trump says Republicans should vote to release Epstein files

President Donald Trump said House Republicans should vote to release files involving the Jeffrey Epstein case, a startling reversal after previously fighting the proposal.

“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,” Mr Trump wrote on social media shortly after landing at Joint Base Andrews following a weekend in Florida.

Democrats and some Republicans have been pushing a measure that would force the Justice Department to make public more documents from the case.

The president’s shift is an implicit acknowledgement that supporters of the measure have enough votes to pass the House, although it has an unclear future in the Senate.

The bill would force the Justice Department to release all files and communications related to Epstein, as well as any information about the investigation into his death in federal prison.

Information about Epstein’s victims or ongoing federal investigations would be allowed to be redacted.

“There could be 100 or more” votes from Republicans, said representative Thomas Massie, among the lawmakers discussing the legislation on Sunday news show appearances.

“I’m hoping to get a veto-proof majority on this legislation when it comes up for a vote.”

Mr Massie and Democratic representative Ro Khanna introduced a discharge petition in July to force a vote on their bill. That is a rarely successful tool that allows a majority of members to bypass House leadership and force a floor vote.

Speaker Mike Johnson had panned the discharge petition effort and sent members home early for their August recess when the Republicans’ legislative agenda was upended in the clamouring for an Epstein vote.

Democrats also contend the seating of representative Adelita Grijalva was stalled to delay her becoming the 218th member to sign the petition and gain the threshold needed to force a vote. She became the 218th signature moments after taking the oath of office last week.

Mr Massie said Mr Johnson, Mr Trump and others who have been critical of his efforts would be “taking a big loss this week”.

“I’m not tired of winning yet, but we are winning,” Mr Massie said.

Mr Johnson seems to expect the House will decisively back the Epstein bill.

“We’ll just get this done and move it on. There’s nothing to hide,” he said,  adding that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been releasing “far more information than the discharge petition, their little gambit”.

The vote comes at a time when new documents are raising fresh questions about Epstein and his associates, including a 2019 email that Epstein wrote to a journalist that said Mr Trump “knew about the girls”.

The White House has accused Democrats of selectively leaking the emails to smear the Republican president.

Mr Johnson said Mr Trump “has nothing to hide from this”.

“They’re doing this to go after President Trump on this theory that he has something to do with it. He does not,” he said.

Mr Trump’s association with Epstein is well-established and the president’s name was included in records that his own Justice Department released in February as part of an effort to satisfy public interest in information from the sex-trafficking investigation.

Mr Trump has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein and the mere inclusion of someone’s name in files from the investigation does not imply otherwise.

Epstein, who killed himself in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial, also had many prominent acquaintances in political and celebrity circles besides Mr Trump.