President Trump is urging House Republicans to support the release of the federal government’s files on deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, to move on from the issue.
Trump took to Truth Social on Sunday night to tell Republican lawmakers that they should vote for releasing the Epstein documents, presumably in reference to a bipartisan House measure set to come to a vote in the coming weeks.
“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,” Trump posted.
“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 added.
Last week, House lawmakers obtained the 218 signatures needed to advance a legislative mechanism allowing them to compel a House vote on releasing the Epstein files. The discharge petition gained support from all House Democrats and a handful of Republicans, including Representatives Thomas Massie (R., Ky.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.), both of whom received pointed criticism from Trump over the past few days.
The Trump administration failed to dissuade the Republican lawmakers from signing the discharge petition, which also gained support from a group of Epstein’s victims. It reflects the bipartisan interest in the federal government’s Epstein files, driven by the Trump administration’s decision earlier this year not to release them.
The House Oversight Committee is currently investigating Epstein’s activities. The panel has released documents from the Justice Department and Epstein’s estate during the investigation. Most of the documents from the Justice Department were already made public, but the disclosures from Epstein’s estate have contained many never-before-seen emails and documents.
House Democrats released three of those emails last week in an attempt to implicate Trump in Epstein’s sex trafficking. In one of the emails, Epstein told author Michael Wolff that Trump “knew about the girls” and that he had told Epstein’s partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, to “stop.” Another email from 2011 showed Epstein telling Maxwell that Trump “spent hours at my house” with a victim, whose name Democrats redacted. The redacted victim was Virginia Giuffre, a prominent Epstein accuser who previously asserted that Trump had done nothing wrong during his friendship with Epstein. Giuffre committed suicide earlier this year, after having spent much of her adult life raising awareness about Epstein’s disturbing behavior.
Prompted by the Democrats’ email release, the House Oversight Committee released a batch of 20,000 emails from Epstein’s estate on Wednesday. The emails shined new light on Epstein’s relationships with powerful officials across business, politics, media, and academia. They also reflected Epstein’s unfavorable view of Trump during his first term. Epstein died in a New York City jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. His death was officially ruled a suicide, a determination the Trump administration affirmed.
Trump directed the Justice Department on Friday to launch an investigation into prominent Democrats with links to Epstein. He specifically mentioned former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, former President Bill Clinton, and billionaire Democratic donor Reid Hoffman. Attorney General Pam Bondi quickly instructed the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan to take on the Epstein investigation.
A spokesman for Clinton said he “did nothing and knew nothing” about Epstein in response to Trump’s directive. No credible allegations have been raised against Clinton stemming from his friendship with Epstein. Hoffman similarly issued a defiant response to the Trump administration’s new investigation.
“I want this complete release because it will show that the calls for baseless investigations of me are nothing more than political persecution and slander. I was never a client of Epstein’s and never had any engagement with him other than fundraising for MIT,” Hoffman said in a thread of posts on X.
The newly released emails showed that Epstein regularly communicated with Summers about personal and political topics. Clinton and Trump are also mentioned repeatedly in the email cache. Trump has never been accused of wrongdoing over the course of his friendship with Epstein, in the 1990s up to the mid-2000s.