WASHINGTON: The Republican-controlled US House of Repr­ese­ntatives voted almost unanimously 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 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 fraternised with some of the most powerful men in the country.

After the vote, they stood to applaud lawmakers from the House’s public gallery, some of them crying and hugging each other. 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 his 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.

Trump lashes out over question

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 licence revoked.

“I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein,” Trump told reporters while hosting a visit by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “I threw him out of my club many years ago because I thought he was a sick pervert.” Trump socialised and partied with Epstein in the 1990s and 2000s before what he calls a rift, but the old friendship has become a rare weak spot for the president with his supporters.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 44 per cent of Republicans approve of Trump’s handling of the matter, well below the 82pc who approve of his overall performance.

“Please stop making this political, it is not about you, President Trump,” Jena-Lisa Jones, who said Epstein sexually abused her when she was 14, told a press conference before the vote.

Published in Dawn, November 19th, 2025