{"id":172381,"date":"2025-11-19T08:28:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T08:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/congress-passes-bill-to-force-the-release-of-the-epstein-files-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T08:28:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T08:28:17","slug":"congress-passes-bill-to-force-the-release-of-the-epstein-files-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/congress-passes-bill-to-force-the-release-of-the-epstein-files-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress passes bill to force the release of the Epstein files – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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WASHINGTON \u2014 Congress voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to pass legislation to compel the Justice Department to release all its records related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein \u2014 a major victory for lawmakers in both parties who’ve been leading the push for months.
As the final vote tally in the House, 427-1, was read, several Epstein survivors<\/a> who were sitting in the gallery embraced ane another and loud cheers went up through the chamber. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., was the only lawmaker to vote no<\/a>.
Just hours later, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., headed to the floor and requested unanimous consent that the measure be passed in the upper chamber once the bill is sent over from the House.
Not a single senator objected.
It means that once the paperwork is sent from the House to the Senate, the bill will be sent straight to President Donald Trump, who has vowed to sign it into law.
The measure, which last week secured enough bipartisan support<\/a> to head straight to the House floor, got a big boost over the weekend, when Trump reversed his position<\/a> and urged Republicans to support it.
Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif. \u2014 the bipartisan duo who co-authored the legislation and successfully forced the vote on the House floor, despite leadership’s objections \u2014 had spent the past few days trying to drive up the vote tally to put pressure on the Senate.
The votes in both chambers exceeded their expectations.
At a candlelight vigil with Epstein survivors and lawmakers outside the Capitol on Tuesday night, survivor Annie Farmer invoked the memory of Virginia Giuffre, the Epstein survivor and sexual abuse advocate who died by suicide in April<\/a> at age 41. Her memoir, \u201cNobody\u2019s Girl<\/a>,\u201d was posthumously published last month.
\u201cShe immediately rallied all of us together and had this vision for what could happen, what people could learn from this, what she wanted to do with this platform and push that forward in such a brave way,\u201d Farmer said, breaking down in tears.
\u201cI feel like she\u2019s here with us. I feel like she can see this. So thank you, Virginia, for all that you\u2019ve done for us,” she continued.
The bill would require the attorney general to release in a searchable and downloadable format \u201call unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials\u201d related to Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, flight logs or travel records, people and entities connected with Epstein and internal emails, notes and other internal Justice Department communications.
Those records would need to be released \u201cnot later than 30 days\u201d after the law is enacted.
The legislation says the attorney general may withhold or redact any information that identifies victims or would jeopardize an active federal investigation.
Ahead of the House vote, Massie, Khanna and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., held an emotional news conference outside the Capitol with more than a dozen Epstein survivors, urging senators to quickly take up the bill.
“You had Jeffrey Epstein, who literally set up an island of rape \u2014 a rape island \u2014 and you had rich and powerful men, some of the richest people in the world, who thought that they could hang out with bankers, buy off politicians and abuse and rape America\u2019s girls with no consequence,” Khanna told reporters Tuesday.
“Because survivors spoke up, because of their courage, the truth is finally going to come out,” he added. “And when it comes out, this country is really going to have a moral reckoning.”
Earlier in the day, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had been working to persuade the Senate to amend language in the bill to better protect the identities of victims. Higgins, the lone no vote, wrote on X<\/a> that the bill, as written, could reveal “thousands of innocent people \u2014 witnesses, people who provided alibis, family members, etc.”
But Massie urged his fellow Republicans not to “muck it up in the Senate.” And in the end, with such a large vote in the House, no GOP senator dared stand in the way.
“We fought the president, the attorney general, the FBI director, the speaker of the House and the vice president to get this win,” Massie said, adding that opponents deserved some “credit” because they ultimately came around to the legislation. “They are finally on the side of justice.”
Even after having voted for the bill, Johnson was still fuming over the process hours later. Returning to the Capitol from a White House dinner honoring Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Johnson said, “I’m deeply disappointed in this outcome,” and he lamented that “Chuck Schumer rushed it to the floor.” Senate Majority John Thune, R-S.D., didn’t object, despite being aware of Johnson’s concerns.
Johnson said he was continuing to have conversations with Trump about those issues. “I’m frustrated with the process,” he said, “but I trust Leader Thune.”
Momentum on the Epstein discharge petition had been building in the House, which allowed rank-and-file members to circumvent leadership and force a vote.
All House Democrats were on board, and after half the House signed the discharge petition<\/a> to force a vote, a deluge of Republicans began announcing they would vote for it.
Trump and the White House had worked behind the scenes to stop the effort, trying to pressure a handful of GOP women to drop off the petition.
But with the writing on the wall, Trump abruptly reversed course <\/a>Sunday night, <\/a>posting on Truth Social <\/a>that House Republicans should vote for the bill. On Friday, Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Epstein\u2019s ties<\/a> to prominent Democrats and financial institutions.
Trump, who had supported releasing the Epstein files before his re-election last year, vowed Monday to sign the legislation should it reach his desk, which he said would allow the GOP to turn the page and focus on the economy.
“Some of the people that we mentioned are being looked at very seriously for their relationship to Jeffrey Epstein, but they were with him all the time \u2014 I wasn\u2019t. I wasn\u2019t at all,” Trump said in the Oval Office.
“What I just don\u2019t want Epstein to do is detract from the great success of the Republican Party, including the fact that the Democrats are totally blamed for the shutdown,” he continued.
Standing with fellow Epstein survivors Tuesday, Jena-Lisa Jones lashed out at Trump over the new Justice Department probe<\/a>.
\u201cI beg you, President Trump: Please stop making this political,\u201d Jones said. \u201cIt is not about you, President Trump. You are our president. Please start acting like it. Show some class, show some real leadership, show that you actually care about the people other than yourself.\u201d
Jones said she voted for Trump. \u201cYour behavior on this issue has been a national embarrassment,” she said.
Asked about the criticism, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said: “Democrats and the media knew about Epstein and his victims for years and did nothing to help them while President Trump was calling for transparency, and is now delivering on it with thousands of pages of documents as part of the ongoing Oversight investigation.”
A conservative Trump ally in the House told NBC News that Republicans have been widely frustrated with the White House\u2019s dismissive handling of the Epstein saga and have privately encouraged it to shift strategy \u2014 which was communicated as recently as Friday, days before Trump flipped on the issue.
The White House was also warned that there would be mass Republican defections on the House floor.
The Justice Department has already turned over tens of thousands of documents<\/a> from the Epstein investigation to the House Oversight Committee, which is conducting its own probe and has made many of those records public.
In addition, Democrats on the Oversight Committee released a series of emails last week from Epstein to Maxwell and journalist Michael Wolff that refer to Trump<\/a>, which Epstein\u2019s estate turned over in response to a subpoena. In one 2019 email, Epstein wrote of Trump, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop,\u201d but he didn’t accuse Trump of any wrongdoing.
Trump has consistently denied involvement in any of Epstein’s crimes. The two men had socialized in the 1980s and the 1990s, including at a 1992 party at Trump\u2019s Mar-a-Lago estate<\/a> in Florida, where video shows them discussing women. But Trump and Epstein had a falling-out in the 2000s, when Trump accused Epstein of hiring away<\/a> girls and young women from his resort\u2019s spa. Trump said he banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago.
In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to Florida state charges of soliciting prostitution with a minor. In July 2019, the Justice Department charged him with sex trafficking of minors. A month later, authorities said, Epstein killed himself in his jail cell while he was awaiting trial.
Johnson has argued for months that the Epstein legislation isn’t needed because the Oversight Committee has been releasing documents to the public. He dodged questions Monday about Trump’s about-face and his conversations with the president.
“He’s never had anything to hide. He and I had the same concern \u2014 that we wanted to ensure that victims of these heinous crimes are completely protected from disclosure, those who don’t want their names out there,” Johnson told reporters. “And I’m not sure the discharge petition does that, and that’s part of the problem.”
Scott Wong is a senior congressional reporter for NBC News.
Melanie Zanona is a Capitol Hill correspondent for NBC News.
Kyle Stewart is a producer and off-air reporter covering Congress for NBC News, managing coverage of the House.
Brennan Leach is an associate producer for NBC News covering the Senate.
© 2025 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeWASHINGTON \u2014 Congress voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to pass legislation to compel the Justice Department to release all its records related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein \u2014 a major victory for lawmakers in both parties who’ve been leading the push for months.As the final vote […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":172382,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-172381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}