The House was expected to vote overwhelmingly on Tuesday to demand that the Justice Department release all files related to its investigation into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, an action that House Republicans worked for months to avoid.
But after President Trump reversed himself on the matter and called on his party to back the bill, Republicans in Congress distanced themselves from past efforts to kill or at least slow-walk the measure and embraced a bill they claimed to have supported from the beginning.
In their upside-down telling, Mr. Trump — who pushed hard to head off the vote — had consistently fought for the release of the Epstein files. And so had they.
“It’s going to be an important vote to continue to show the transparency that we’ve delivered,” said Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican. Previously, Republican leaders had said the measure was unnecessary given that a House committee was investigating the handling of the Epstein case, and they claimed it did not adequately protect the identities of Mr. Epstein’s victims.
Never mind that Republicans have worked for months to block a vote, wary of crossing a vengeful president. Mr. Trump dismissed the documents as part of a “hoax” and ordered White House officials to tell lawmakers that any move to advance a vote on the Epstein files would be viewed as a “hostile act.”
With a unanimous House vote on the Epstein matter now appearing likely, they sought to erase all of that old drama.
Representative Anna Paulina Luna, Republican of Florida, who supported the discharge petition to release the files but later backed down and refused to join the effort, insisted that “no one convinced President Trump” to reverse course on the matter.
“He has always been consistent on this,” Ms. Luna said. “It has been made very apparent that this was used to smear him, and I am not the only one that feels that way.”
Representative Mike Flood, the Nebraska Republican who has stood in front of raucous town halls where voters demanded the release of the files, said Mr. Trump’s change of position had had no bearing on his own. He said he had been a “yes” on releasing of the files for months, even though he never added his name to the petition demanding such a vote.
“This is how the process works,” he said. “Everybody comes to the table, says where they’re at. The president understands that.”
Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, one of the three Republican women who helped to force the coming vote by resisting a relentless White House pressure campaign to remove their signatures from the petition, appeared to want to position herself back at Mr. Trump’s side as quickly as possible.
As she exited the Capitol late Monday night, Ms. Boebert said the media had misunderstood the context of her meeting last week in the White House Situation Room with Attorney General Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director. It was not part of a pressure campaign by Mr. Trump’s team to get her to remove her signature from the petition, she claimed, but merely a chance for a group of like-minded people to discuss their shared interest in transparency in the Epstein affair.
When pressed on whether she was relieved that Mr. Trump had changed his position on the document release, Ms. Boebert replied tersely: “I didn’t think that President Trump wouldn’t come around.”
Representative Troy Nehls, Republican of Texas, who had staked out a firm “no” position on the release of the files just days ago, dismissing it all as the “Epstein hoax” designed by Democrats to “distract us from the winning of President Trump and his administration,” was unapologetic on Monday night about doing an about-face. He conceded that he was following Mr. Trump’s lead after the president instructed House Republicans to back the bill.
“It is a hoax by the Democrats against Trump,” Mr. Nehls said, lighting a cigar on the steps of the Capitol.
So then why support it?
“Why not?” he replied. “Trump said just release the damn files. He said do it — release the damn files.”
Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times.
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