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US House Passes Measure to Force Release of Epstein Files
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By Reuters
Published 2 hours ago on
November 18, 2025

U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein appears in a photograph taken for the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services' sex offender registry March 28, 2017 and obtained by Reuters July 10, 2019. (Reuters File)

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WASHINGTON — The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to force the release of Justice Department files on the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, an outcome President Donald Trump had fought for months before ending his opposition.

Two days after Trump’s abrupt about-face, the vote passed by 427-1, sending a resolution requiring the release of all unclassified records on Epstein to the Senate for consideration. The public and increasingly bitter feud among Republicans over the Epstein files had fractured relations between Trump and some of his most ardent supporters.

Before the vote, about two dozen survivors of Epstein’s alleged abuse joined a trio of Democratic and Republican lawmakers outside the U.S. Capitol to urge the release of the records. The women held photographs of their younger selves, the age at which they said they first encountered Epstein, a New York financier who fraternized with some of the most powerful men in the country.

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The Epstein scandal has been a political thorn in Trump’s side for months, partly because he amplified conspiracy theories about Epstein to his own supporters. Many Trump voters believe the Trump administration has covered up Epstein’s ties to powerful figures and obscured details surrounding his death, which was ruled a suicide, in a Manhattan jail in 2019.

Despite his changed position on the bill, the Republican president remains angry about the attention paid to the Epstein matter. On Tuesday, he called a reporter who asked about it in the Oval Office a “terrible person” and said the television network the journalist worked for should have its license revoked.

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