{"id":35686,"date":"2025-11-19T08:35:30","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T02:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/?p=35686"},"modified":"2025-11-19T08:35:30","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T02:50:30","slug":"congress-approves-bill-to-release-epstein-files-that-will-head-to-trumps-desk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/congress-approves-bill-to-release-epstein-files-that-will-head-to-trumps-desk\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress approves bill to release Epstein files that will head to Trump’s desk"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

BBC News: Both chambers of Congress agreed to order the US justice department to release its files on sex offender financier Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n

The House of Representatives overwhelming approved the measure in a 427-1 vote and the Senate unanimously fast-tracked it without a formal vote.<\/p>\n

The moves come just days after President Donald Trump reversed his position and urged Congress to vote to disclose the records following public pushback from many of his supporters.<\/p>\n

Last week, Trump and his ties to Epstein were thrust back into the headlines after more than 20,000 pages of documents – some mentioning the president – were released. The White House denied any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

Republican Clay Higgins, of Louisiana, was the sole House objector and cited his concern about \u201cinnocent people being hurt\u201d with the release of the information.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s reversal from attacking those on Capitol Hill who wanted the files released to saying there was \u201cnothing to hide\u201d surprised some in Washington.<\/p>\n

The Republican congressional leadership was caught off guard after aligning their message with the president for the past few weeks and opposing the release.<\/p>\n

House Speaker Mike Johnson had repeatedly called the push to release the Epstein files a “Democrat hoax”.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, he voted in support of release.<\/p>\n

The measure had been expected to take a few days to reach the US Senate, but after the resounding afternoon vote in the House, the timeline quickly sped up.<\/p>\n

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer brought up the bill on the floor of the Senate under a procedure called unanimous consent. Because no one objected, there was no debate and no amendments added to the bill.<\/p>\n

It will head from the Senate to the president\u2018s desk, where he is expected to sign it into law.<\/p>\n

A congressional vote was not required to release the files – Trump could have ordered the release on his own.<\/p>\n

The bill requires Attorney General Pam Bondi to release \u201call unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials\u201d related to Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell no later than 30 days after the law is enacted.<\/p>\n

Those materials include internal justice department communications, flight logs and people and entities connected to Epstein.<\/p>\n

But the bill also gives Bondi the power to withhold information that would jeopardise any active federal investigation or identifies any victims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BBC News: Both chambers of Congress agreed to order the US justice department to release its files on sex offender financier Jeffrey Epstein. The House of Representatives overwhelming approved the measure in a 427-1 vote and the Senate unanimously fast-tracked it without a formal vote. The moves come just days after President Donald Trump reversed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35686"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35686"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35689,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35686\/revisions\/35689"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}