Watch Live: House votes, approves bill forcing release of Jeffrey Epstein files

WASHINGTON – The House voted and approved a bill Tuesday to force the Justice Department to release the case files it has collected on the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, pushing past a monthslong effort by President Donald Trump and Republican leaders to stymie the effort.

The bill passed 427-1, with the only no vote coming from Rep. Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican who is a fervent supporter of Trump. He also chairs a subcommittee that initiated a subpoena on the Justice Department for the Epstein files.

What does the bill do?

Why you should care:

The bill would force the Justice Department to release all files and communications related to Epstein, as well as any information about the investigation into his death in federal prison. Information about Epstein’s victims or continuing federal investigations would be allowed to be redacted, per the bill.

RELATED: Trump reverses course, calls on House Republicans to release Epstein files

The department, however, would not be allowed to redact information due to “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.”

Several survivors of Epstein’s abuse, joined by lawmakers, also plan to speak outside the Capitol on Tuesday morning.

What has Trump said?

What they’re saying:

Trump said House Republicans should vote to release the files in the Jeffrey Epstein case, a startling reversal after previously fighting the proposal as a growing number of those in his own party supported it.

“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,” Trump wrote on social media late Sunday after landing at Joint Base Andrews following a weekend in Florida.

“I DON’T CARE!” Trump wrote in his social media post. “All I do care about is that Republicans get BACK ON POINT.”

RELATED: Epstein emails say Trump ‘spent hours’ with one of Epstein’s victims

Trump’s statement followed a fierce fight within the GOP over the files, including an increasingly nasty split with Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who had long been one of his fiercest supporters.

What happens next now that the bill has passed?

What’s next:

The bill’s future in the Senate is a different story.

It already has support from a majority of the House, and more Republicans are expected to vote for it as they respond to demands from their voters.

The tougher test will come in the Senate, where Republicans hold a 53–47 majority.

RELATED: Epstein files: Ghislaine Maxwell told DOJ she did not see Trump act in ‘inappropriate way’

If the measure passes both chambers of Congress, it would go to Trump. He could try to stop it with a veto, but he would also be under enormous pressure to sign it.

Who was Jeffrey Epstein?

The backstory:

Epstein was charged in 2019 with sexually abusing dozens of underage girls in a case brought more than a decade after he secretly cut a deal with federal prosecutors to dispose of nearly identical allegations.

Prosecutors said the evidence against Epstein included a “vast trove” of hundreds or even thousands of lewd photographs of young women or girls, discovered in a weekend search of his New York City mansion. Authorities also found papers and phone records corroborating the alleged crimes, and a massage room still set up the way accusers said it appeared, prosecutors said.

RELATED: Virginia Giuffre’s memoir reveals how Epstein, Maxwell ‘broke down’ girls step by step in psychological war

Epstein was accused in the indictment of paying underage girls hundreds of dollars in cash for massages and then molesting them at his homes in Palm Beach, Florida, and New York from 2002 through 2005.

He “intentionally sought out minors and knew that many of his victims were in fact under the age of 18,” prosecutors said. He also paid some of his victims to recruit additional girls, creating “a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit,” prosecutors said.

Epstein’s arrest came amid increased #MeToo-era scrutiny of the 2008 non-prosecution agreement, which caused a furor in recent years as the details came to light, many of them exposed in a series of stories by The Miami Herald.

He died by suicide in August 2019. He was found unresponsive in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Trump and Epstein

Epstein wrote in a 2019 email to a journalist that Donald Trump “knew about the girls,” according to documents made public, but what he knew — and whether it pertained to the sex offender’s crimes — is unclear. 

The White House quickly accused Democrats of selectively leaking the emails to smear the president.

The disclosures seemed designed to raise new questions about Trump’s friendship with Epstein and about what knowledge he may have had regarding what prosecutors call a yearslong effort by Epstein to exploit underage girls. 

The Republican businessman-turned-politician has consistently denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and has said he ended their relationship years ago.

The version of the 2011 email released by the Democrats redacted the name of the victim, but Republicans on the committee later said it was Virginia Giuffre, who accused Epstein of arranging for her to have sexual encounters with a number of his rich and powerful friends.

Giuffre, who died earlier this year, long insisted that Trump was not among the men who had victimized her.

Crime and Public SafetyPoliticsDonald J. TrumpWashington, D.C.News