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Trump signs Epstein bill he once labored to kill

President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a bill to force the Department of Justice to release more information related to its case against the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in a stunning reversal after fighting the bill’s passage for months.

The law — the Epstein Files Transparency Act — is the culmination of months of fierce GOP infighting as some Republican defectors joined Democrats to buck their party’s leadership and force a vote. Trump had virulently opposed the legislation, calling it a Democratic “hoax,” but reversed course earlier this week and urged his party to support it after the bill’s passage appeared inevitable.

It is not yet known when the documents may be released.

“Perhaps the truth about these Democrats, and their associations with Jeffrey Epstein, will soon be revealed, because I HAVE JUST SIGNED THE BILL TO RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES! As everyone knows, I asked Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, to pass this Bill in the House and Senate, respectively. Because of this request, the votes were almost unanimous in favor of passage,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The legislation passed the House by an overwhelming 427-1 vote Tuesday before speeding through the Senate in the afternoon, with the chamber approving the measure by unanimous consent.

The newly signed law compels the Justice Department to release information in its possession within 30 days, though it’s unclear how much new information the department will actually make public and when it may do so.

It comes days after Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released a trove of new documents that reopened questions about the relationship between Trump and the disgraced financier, including the suggestion in an email by Epstein that Trump “knew about the girls.”

Trump has repeatedly denied having a close relationship with Epstein and claims to have kicked him out of his Mar-a-Lago club in the early 2000s. Trump has denied wrongdoing in relation to the Epstein allegations, and no evidence has suggested that Trump took part in Epstein’s crimes.

The White House organized a monthslong pressure campaign to try to prevent the legislation from reaching a House vote, even as his opposition grew increasingly politically perilous for the president. During the presidential campaign, he promised to make the Epstein files public.

That crusade included Trump and White House officials pressuring the three Republican women who signed onto the discharge petition — Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia , Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Nancy Mace of South Carolina — to remove their names.

LP Staff Writers

Writers at Lord’s Press come from a range of professional backgrounds, including history, diplomacy, heraldry, and public administration. Many publish anonymously or under initials—a practice that reflects the publication’s long-standing emphasis on discretion and editorial objectivity. While they bring expertise in European nobility, protocol, and archival research, their role is not to opine, but to document. Their focus remains on accuracy, historical integrity, and the preservation of events and individuals whose significance might otherwise go unrecorded.

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