427 congressmen supported the bill, while only one was against it – Clay Higgins, a Republican from Louisiana. The legal act will now go to the Senate, where it may be adopted on Tuesday. The leaders of both parties in the Senate – Republican John Thune and Democrat Chuck Schumer – supported the quick passage of the law and sending it to the president's desk.
The bill orders the Justice Department to disclose all files on the Epstein case, although it also includes provisions allowing some documents to be retained for the sake of the investigation. The breakthrough occurred when, after weeks of delay and resistance from Republicans and President Donald Trump, a majority of congressmen supported a petition forcing the vote. Although the White House pressured Republicans who supported the petition to withdraw their signatures, in the end, in the face of certain defeat, President Trump urged the party to vote for the bill, arguing that he had “nothing to hide” and that the Epstein case was a matter for Democrats, not Republicans.
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What are the main points of the Epstein disclosure bill?
How many votes supported the bill in the House of Representatives?
Who is the Speaker of the House of Representatives?
What can Congress do in the event of a Trump veto?
House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson, who blocked the vote for weeks, finally supported the bill, although he warned that without amendments it could lead to the disclosure of the data of Epstein's victims and impede the work of the prosecutor's office.
When asked about the matter on Sunday, Trump did not clearly answer whether he would sign the bill, but even with a veto, Congress could override his objections. So far, the Ministry of Justice has published approximately 30,000 pages of documents in the Epstein case, but a significant part of them has been truncated. The Trump administration has so far claimed that it cannot disclose the rest of the documents for legal reasons.
Donald Trump ordered an investigation by the prosecutor's office
On Friday, Trump, in response to increasingly frequent questions about his relationship with Epstein in the light of the pedophile's emails revealed by Congress, ordered the prosecutor's office to open an investigation into the relationships of former President Bill Clinton and other Democrats and people supporting them with Epstein. Due to the new investigation, the Justice Department may refuse to release files under investigation.
According to Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican congresswoman who has so far been one of Trump's closest allies in Congress, the test of Trump's intentions will be whether the records will actually be released. The Epstein case led to a public conflict between her and Trump, who began calling her a “traitor.”
Trump was a longtime friend of Epstein, who was convicted in 2008 of soliciting minors for prostitution, and in 2019 hanged himself in prison before a federal trial on more serious charges. Despite knowing each other for many years, Trump claimed that he kicked Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club because he “stealed” his masseuses. On Tuesday, however, he said the reason for breaking off relations with him was because he was a “sick pervert.”
Epstein's emails revealed
However, in emails released by Congress last week, Epstein suggested that Trump “knew about the girls.” In a 2011 correspondence with his partner Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein wrote that Trump spent “hours at his home” with one of his underage victims, Virginia Giuffre. Giuffre herself testified that Trump never behaved inappropriately towards her. In other emails, Epstein claimed that he “knows how screwed up Trump is” and argued months before his death in 2019 that he was the only person who could bring him down.
The emails also show that Epstein advised Russia's ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, who died in 2017, on how to deal with Trump and also sought a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the same matter.
