US Congress passes law to force release of Epstein papers
Trump has said that as soon as the text reaches his desk, he will sign it to make it effective.
WashingtonThe bill to force the Justice Department to release Jeffrey Epstein's papers has now received congressional approval, after the Senate unanimously agreed to send the text unchanged to President Donald Trump. The House of Representatives passed the measure by a vote of 427 to 1, and the Senate expedited it unanimously without a formal vote. The text will now be sent directly to the president for his signature. Although Trump has opposed the release of the papers for months, He has now said he will sign the law so that they can be published.The process accelerated after 5:00 p.m. (local time), when the Democratic minority leader, Chuck Schumer, forced unanimous consent in the Senate to prevent the bill, which had been passed by an overwhelming majority just hours earlier, from being rendered ineffective. "This is about giving the American people the transparency they have been demanding," said Schumer, who claimed a victory amid calls for his removal from the more progressive wing of the Democrats following the government shutdown resolution. Meanwhile, Trump wrote to Truth Social in response to the speed of the resolution and reminded Republicans: "Don't lose sight of all the victories we have achieved." The scandal surrounding the president's relationship with Epstein threatens to shatter Donald Trump's grip on his base and has already created a schism within the MAGA movement. Only one Republican lawmaker in the House of Representatives voted against releasing the papers; the rest voted overwhelmingly in favor.
Before the vote, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has gone from blindly loyal to Trump to a dissenter, rebuked the president for the attacks he launched against her over the weekend. "I was branded a traitor by a man I fought for for six years and to whom I gave my loyalty freely," she told Epstein's victims gathered outside the Capitol. "I owe him nothing," Greene said, reminding the Republican how he was able to win the primaries without her support.
Change of stance
On Monday, Trump gave his senators the green light to move the bill forward: "I'm all for it." The president said that once the upper house gave its approval, he would sign the resolution immediately to make it effective.
The vote has reached the House of Representatives following an initiative by a bipartisan group of lawmakers who in July launched a petition to circumvent the obstruction by the Speaker of the House, Republican Mike Johnson. The proposal garnered the support of 218 representatives and forced the bill to finally be put to a vote. This Tuesday, before the session began, Johnson relented and assured that he would support the vote. "I will vote to get this through. I think it could be almost a unanimous vote, because everyone here, all the Republicans, want to demonstrate their maximum transparency," he said.
After trying to prevent the proposal from reaching the House of Representatives, Johnson attempted to portray the Democrats as responsible for the current deadlock: "I sincerely hope my Democratic colleagues will show the same level of urgency and enthusiasm when it comes to this."
Until the weekend, Trump and his team had pressured to prevent the release of more files from the Epstein investigation, butIn a surprising change of position (with which he intended to disguise the loss of control among his ranks), Trump on Monday asked the deputies to vote in favor of releasing the files of the pedophile case. with whom he himself maintained a close relationship. "We have nothing to hide, and it's time to put this Democratic hoax behind us, perpetrated by lunatics of the radical left to distract from the great success of the Republican Party," the president argued through Truth Social.
With this message, Trump turned the tables on the incriminating narrative that had been generated around him following the publication last week of a series of Epstein emails. In one of the communications, the convicted sex offender told his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, that the magnate and current president of the United States had spent "hours" with one of the victims at his home, implying that he knew about the child trafficking ring. In response, Republicans released more than 20,000 documents with other communications from Epstein in which he mentions other Democratic figures, such as former President Bill Clinton and his former Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers. Taking advantage of the occasion, Trump announced that he was urging the Justice Department to open an investigation into their ties to Epstein, an attempt to turn the scandal against his political enemies.
