The House voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to force the Justice Department to release all the files it has from investigating Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking crimes.
The Senate quickly followed suit, approving a unanimous consent motion to pass the measure as soon as it was formally received from the House.
The 427-1 House vote comes after a bipartisan duo, Reps. Thomas Massie, Kentucky Republican, and Ro Khanna, California Democrat, led a discharge petition to gather signatures from a majority of the House and force a vote against GOP leaders’ wishes.
“Because survivors spoke up, because of their courage, the truth is finally going to come out,” Mr. Khanna said. “And when it comes out, this country is really going to have a moral reckoning: How did we allow this to happen?”
President Trump stopped fighting against the effort this week and said he’d sign the bill, freeing up Republicans to support the measure.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, opposed the discharge petition but ultimately voted for the bill despite his concerns that it was drafted in a “haphazard” way.
SEE ALSO: Specter of long-held conspiracy theories looms over House vote on Epstein files
He said he talked to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican, about amending the measure in the upper chamber to include more protections for the victims, among other legal guardrails.
But Mr. Thune told reporters Monday that changes were not in the cards as he was “hotlining” the bill to see if any senators would object to passing it by unanimous consent.
“When a bill passes the House 427-1 and the president has said he’ll sign it into law, I’m not sure that there’s going to be a need for, or a desire for, an amendment process over here,” he said.
No senator objected to the hotline, and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, offered the unanimous consent motion to pass the bill.
“This isn’t about Democrats versus Republicans or about Congress versus the president,” Mr. Schumer said. “This is about giving the American people the transparency they’ve been crying for. This is about holding accountable all the people in Jeffrey Epstein’s circle who raped, groomed, targeted and enabled the abuse of hundreds of girls for years and years.”
Mr. Khanna, Mr. Massie and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who signed their petition, held a press conference before the vote with several of Epstein’s victims who want all the files released so that others involved in the sex trafficking scheme or covering it up can be held accountable.
“This is not an issue of a few corrupt Democrats or a few corrupt Republicans,” said Annie Farmer, one of the victims whose sister was also abused and reported Epstein to the FBI back in 1996. “This is a case of institutional betrayal. Because these crimes were not properly investigated, so many more girls and women were harmed.”
The vote the survivors and the lawmakers behind the discharge petition waited months for showed broad support for transparency in the Epstein case. Only one lawmaker, Louisiana Republican Rep. Clay Higgins, voted no.
President Trump stopped fighting against the effort and said he’d sign the bill, freeing up Republicans to support the measure.
Only four Republicans — Mr. Massie, Ms. Green and Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Nancy Mace of South Carolina — had signed the discharge petition, along with all House Democrats, to force the vote.
Some Republicans who voted for the measure Tuesday still voiced hesitation about the legislation not including enough protection for the victims and people who may be named in the files but were not ultimately implicated in Epstein’s crimes, among other legal guardrails.
“I want anybody associated with this mess to rot in hell,” Rep. Chip Roy, Texas Republican, said. “But I also want to make sure that we, the people, are protecting people who deserve to be protected, rather than politically risking and endangering them.”
Mr. Johnson opposed Mr. Massie and Mr. Khanna’s discharge petition for months, saying it was made moot by a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigation into the matter.
The Oversight panel subpoenaed the Justice Department and the Epstein estate and released tens of thousands of documents over the past few months. The more revealing documents have come from the estate, as many of the documents the Justice Department provided so far had previously been made public.
While Mr. Johnson said he’d prefer the committee investigation take precedence over the legislation, he and other Republicans did not want to oppose it once Mr. Massie and Mr. Khanna secured enough signatures to force a vote.
“None of us want to go on record and in any way be accused of not being for maximum transparency,” the speaker said.
Mr. Trump has long referred to the effort to release the Epstein files as a “hoax” orchestrated by Democrats to distract from his administration’s accomplishments. But on Sunday night, he gave Republicans his blessing to vote for the legislation.
“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, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown,’” he said on social media.
On Monday, Mr. Trump said he would sign the bill if it reached his desk.
