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 all but one 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 a 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.
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