House takes major step toward forcing Trump’s DOJ to release Epstein files after GOP worked for months to quash effort

The House on Tuesday took the significant step of ordering President Donald Trump’s Justice Department to publicly release all of its investigative files into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, after months of nasty infighting within the GOP.

The measure — which remarkably won support from nearly every Republican — now heads to the Senate, where GOP leaders must quickly decide if they will send it to Trump’s desk. The president has said he’ll sign the bill if Congress passes it, after months of calling the issue a “Democratic hoax.”

In the end, even Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team backed the measure, despite spending the summer and fall trying to quash Washington’s obsession with the Epstein files, while insisting the bill did not do enough to protect victims’ privacy. Johnson said Tuesday he is urging his Senate counterpart, Majority Leader John Thune, to add key protections if he does decide to take up the measure.

“I’m going to vote to move this forward,” Johnson said at a press conference ahead of the vote, adding that “all the Republicans want to go on record to show they’re for maximum transparency.”

It’s a remarkable turnaround for Trump and Republican leaders in Washington, who had unsuccessfully tried to halt the measure led by party agitator, Rep. Thomas Massie, and strongly backed by Democrats. But by this weekend, with a House vote looming, Trump and his team feared an embarrassing defeat was coming and he agreed to relent — effectively allowing GOP lawmakers to vote for Massie’s measure.

“This is an overdue moment,” Massie said Tuesday, hours ahead of the vote.

“We’ve fought the president, the attorney general, the FBI director, the speaker of the House and the vice president to get this win,” the Kentucky Republican said during a news conference on Capitol Hill, quickly adding that they are now “on our side today.”

Massie has been pilloried by Trump and his advisers in recent weeks, including personal attacks on his marriage and a campaign to primary him in his district.

Yet on Tuesday, Massie said he welcomed Trump’s turnaround on the issue: “What he’s doing this week is strengthening his position by coming on board, and we’re glad to have him.”

Johnson and GOP leaders are hopeful that they can soon turn the page from the months-long Epstein saga within their own conference, which has led to bitter feuds — like the one between Trump and his once-close ally, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene in recent months has joined Massie in pushing for the release of the files, prompting Trump himself to call her a “traitor” and call for her to be ousted in a primary race.

The House’s investigative committees have launched their own inquiries into the Epstein matter

It was Trump himself who had initially helped gin up the GOP’s interest in the government’s Epstein investigation. The president had repeatedly speculated publicly whether the late financier and sex offender had died in prison and promised on the campaign trail to declassify the files.

Trump’s hand-picked DOJ officials had, too, fueled the speculation. When asked by a conservative podcast host in 2023 why the so-called Epstein list had not been released, Kash Patel suggested it was being kept hidden “because of who’s on that list.” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in February of this year that the Epstein client list was sitting on her desk.

But months into Trump’s second term, the White House had released no new information about that investigation. The Epstein issue was quickly creating a major rift between Trump and his MAGA base. Many of his supporters were loudly complaining that the administration was failing to release what Trump once promised he would: the complete set of government files on Epstein.

Soon after, Massie, along with his Democratic partner, Rep. Ro Khanna, launched a rogue push to go around the speaker and bring a bill to the floor without GOP leaders’ approval. A handful of other Republicans — all women, including Greene — signed on, too.

The White House resisted the effort, with personal phone calls to members who had backed the measure and public threats to Massie, Greene and others.

But they couldn’t block it entirely. Just days earlier, Massie and Khanna secured the 218th signature on a procedural gambit, known as a discharge petition, that forced Johnson to bring the bill to the floor.

Democratic Rep. Adelita Grijalva of Arizona, who provided that final signature to advance the measure, insisted on Tuesday it was not just a Democrat or Republican push.

“This is a demand from the nation. This is not a partisan issue,” Grijalva said.