United States President Donald Trump has asked Republican lawmakers to support a measure that would force the Justice Department to release Epstein case files, after days of pressure from a growing bloc in the party.
Trump said on a social media site that he has nothing to hide. “It is time to move past this Democratic hoax perpetrated by far-left lunatics to distract from the successes of the Republican Party, including our recent victory over the shutdown of Democratic government,” he wrote.
In a Sunday interview with ABC News, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who is leading congressional efforts to release the files, suggested that a hundred or more GOP supporters could vote to release the Epstein files this week, despite Trump’s opposition. House Speaker Mike Gonskin also expected a large number of Republican votes.
Johnson said last week that he would move a vote on the bill to this week, and said on “Fox News Sunday” that the House needed to get it done and move forward. He added, in a tone similar to Trump, that there was nothing to hide.
The long friendship between Trump and Jeffrey Epstein clearly ended in the mid-2000s. But Epstein remained focused on Trump for years, seeking to explore remnants of their relationship until he was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges in 2019, the same year he died in prison.
In more than 20,000 pages of typo-filled emails and other messages from Epstein, which were published by a US Congressional committee on Wednesday (12), the millionaire insulted Trump and suggested that he had compromising information about the Republican.
At times, the messages, which are gossipy, vitriolic and conspiratorial, show influential people pressuring Epstein for information about Trump, and Epstein presents himself as Trump’s ultimate interpreter, someone he knew intimately and was “the only person who could take him down.”
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