President Donald Trump signed a bill Wednesday to force the the Department of Justice to release its case files on the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, capitulating to pressure from within his own party after spending months trying to kill it.
In a lengthy Truth Social post, Trump made the announcement and took credit for the bill’s passage, despite supporting it only after it became clear it would pass against his wishes. The president also insisted that the scrutiny over the so-called Epstein files was a distraction to diminish his administration’s progress. “Democrats have used the ‘Epstein’ issue, which affects them far more than the Republican Party, in order to try and distract from our AMAZING Victories,” wrote Trump.
During Trump’s 2024 campaign, he promised to make the documents public if reelected, but later reversed course. In July, the DOJ issued a memo stating that Epstein had died by suicide while in custody and that there is no reason to believe a “client list” exists, effectively closing their investigation.
The memo caused a rift within the Trump administration and among MAGA supporters as well, leading to the president bashing his allies for caring about the “bullshit” Epstein files. As Trump and White House officials tried to spin the documents as some kind of Democrat-engineered “hoax,” The Wall Street Journal broke the story about Trump’s 2003 birthday book letter to Epstein — which the president, who was once a close friend, dismissed as “a fake thing.” It later emerged that Bondi had told Trump in May that his name appeared in the Epstein files, contrary to his claim to a reporter in July that the DOJ had not informed him of this.
While Trump has since inked the bill, his signature does not guarantee that all files will be released. The bill still has key exceptions, which could keep many documents confidential or delay disclosure.
Maria Farmer, who accused Epstein of assaulting her and testified against Ghislaine Maxwell during her trial, praised the bill’s passage. “I have waited nearly three decades for answers about how my reports of abuse at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were investigated by federal authorities,” Farmer said in a statement. “After being left in the dark for decades, having my repeated calls for transparency and action ignored, and living through nearly five administrations that turned a blind eye to this enormous travesty of justice, Congress finally listened to survivors.”
From Rolling Stone US
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