The Senate unanimously approved a bill to release the Epstein files on Tuesday after it passed overwhelmingly in the House.
The bill will now head over to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature. He pledged on Monday that he would sign it.
The Senate passed the bill after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called for unanimous consent, just hours after it was voted on by House 427 to one.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune had been largely tight-lipped over how the bill would proceed in the Senate leading up to the vote, but after it passed Tuesday afternoon in the House with almost unanimous support, he said the Senate could vote on it as soon as Tuesday night.
The passage of the legislation through Congress on Tuesday moved extremely fast after the push to release the Epstein files was delayed for months.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act was first introduced to Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna amid outrage over the Justice Department revealing in July that it would not release any further documents and denying the existence of a client list.
However, House Speaker Mike Johnson refused to hold a vote on their bill as Trump also raged against the renewed interest in the Epstein case and questions about his own relationship with the convicted sex-offender.
In the end, Massie and Khanna introduced a discharge petition in an effort to bypass Johnson and force a vote. It needed 218 signatures to proceed.
Four Republicans including Massie along with Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace signed on to the petition with every single House Democrat bringing it just shy of the needed signatures in September.
Despite a pressure campaign by the president to get the GOP lawmakers to retract their names, the three Republican women remained committed to pushing for the files to be released.
Last week, the petition officially reached the necessary threshold to force the vote with the signature of Democratic Rep. Adelita Grijalva, who was sworn into office at the end of the government shutdown, some 50 days after winning a special election in Arizona.
After the vote appeared inevitable with her signature last week, Johnson finally agreed to schedule it for Tuesday.
Throughout the ongoing process, Trump continued to rail against releasing the files and even recently blasted the House Republicans who suggested they would vote for it as “stupid.” He claimed it was a distraction and accused Democrats of a “hoax.”
But it rapidly became clear last week that he was at risk of facing a massive mutiny in the House with a significant number of GOP members bucking his wishes and voting in favor of the bill.
In a sudden U-turn over the weekend, Trump announced he supported Republicans voting for the bill and claimed they had nothing to hide. On Monday, he said he would sign it if it passed.
Ahead of Tuesday’s House vote, Johnson continued to slam the bill as flawed and claim it did not do enough to protect the victims or innocent people swept up in the documents, an accusation its sponsors said was not true.
In the end, Johnson also voted for the bill. He said while he had concerns, he hoped the legislation would be amended to address issues in the Senate.
But Thune dismissed the Senate making changes to the bill pointing to the broad support it received in the House.
Any amendments would have further delayed its passage and would have meant sending the revised bill back to the House for another vote.
Upon its enactment, the legislation directs the Attorney General to publicly make available all unclassified records and documents the Justice Department and FBI have related to the investigation of Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell after no later than 30 day.
It states that no records should be withheld, redacted or delayed due to embarrassment or potential harm to someone’s reputation.
What can be withheld are the names or identifiable information about the victims as well as any material depicting child sexual abuse or images showing abuse of a person. and any redactions must include a written justification submitted to Congress.
The post Senate Greenlights Bill Forcing Epstein Files Release appeared first on The Daily Beast.
