The U.S. House of Representatives, where Republicans hold the majority, voted almost unanimously to demand the release of Justice Department files related to the late Jeffrey Epstein, who had been convicted of sex crimes. The outcome was decisive even though President Donald Trump had resisted the initiative for months and abandoned his position only two days before the vote. The resolution passed 427–1 and was sent to the Republican-controlled Senate. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters the measure could be approved unanimously, possibly the same day.
The battle over releasing the Epstein files has sharpened internal Republican divisions and strained Trump’s ties with some of his most loyal allies. On the eve of the vote, roughly two dozen women who say they were abused by Epstein appeared outside the Capitol alongside a bipartisan group of lawmakers, demanding that all records be made public. They held childhood photographs of themselves—the age, they said, when they first encountered Epstein, the New York financier with access to the upper reaches of American politics and business. After the resolution passed, the women stood in the public gallery applauding lawmakers; some wept and embraced one another.
The Epstein scandal has posed political risks for Trump for months, not least because he helped fuel the conspiratorial narratives circulating among his supporters. Many Trump voters remain convinced that his administration concealed Epstein’s possible ties to powerful figures and obscured the circumstances of his death, officially ruled a suicide in a Manhattan jail in 2019.