Trump does Epstein U-turn as House Republicans prepare to spurn him

[Thiệu Ngô]

Before the reversal, even some House GOP leaders were mulling whether to support the effort to release DOJ files dealing with the late sex offender.

By Meredith Lee Hill and Mia McCarthy

President Donald Trump is suddenly reversing his monthslong campaign to bottle up a bipartisan effort to disclose federal records dealing with Jeffrey Epstein — just as scores of House Republicans prepare to defy his demands concerning the late convicted sex offender.

“House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax,” he wrote Sunday night on Truth Social, adding, “I DON’T CARE! All I do care about is that Republicans get BACK ON POINT” discussing economic issues.

The U-turn came after months of drama inside the House GOP over a bill that would compel the Justice Department to release its entire Epstein file. An effort by Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson to prevent a floor vote on the measure imploded last week amid an intense White House push to try to keep Republicans in line. The vote is now expected Tuesday.

At the end of last week, Johnson and senior House leaders appeared powerless to stop perhaps as many as 100 Republicans from breaking ranks and voting with Democrats to release the files. The situation worsened over the weekend, as Trump lashed out in deeply personal terms at Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who is leading the effort to force a House vote on Epstein, and publicly spurned Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a one-time close ally who has recently broken with Trump on Epstein and other matters.

Even before that, some members closest to House GOP leadership were mulling whether to support Massie’s effort.

Those include lawmakers like Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), who as Rules Committee chair is among the most trusted members of Johnson’s inner circle. She declined to say in an interview last week whether she would support Massie’s measure. But she suggested she favored it coming to a vote, which GOP leaders expect to happen Tuesday.

“I’m a big full disclosure person,” Foxx said. “I have nothing to hide, and I assume nobody else does, either.”

Rep. Blake Moore of Utah, the Republican conference vice chair, said in an interview last week he normally doesn’t discuss how he will vote. Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, the House GOP policy chair, acknowledged “a lot of consternation” inside the party about what to do.

Asked about his own vote, Hern said, “We’ll make that decision at game time.”

The internal GOP strife underscores how politically toxic Trump’s association with Epstein has become, especially after Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released an email Wednesday in which Epstein suggested that Trump “knew about the girls.”

Evidence has not linked Trump to wrongdoing in the Epstein case, and the president has maintained that he and the disgraced financier had a falling out years ago.

Trump and Johnson had labored to avoid a total GOP jailbreak in the House, knowing a big vote could increase pressure on the Senate to take up the bill and send it to the president’s desk, forcing an embarrassing veto that would prolong the controversy.

Johnson did not directly answer Monday whether he personally planned to vote for the measure, telling reporters that Trump’s new comments “speak for themselves” while also suggesting the bill as written might not do enough to protect Epstein’s victims from invasion of privacy.

“I’m not sure the discharge does that, and that’s part of the problem,” Johnson said,

Senate GOP leaders have not committed to holding a vote, and while Republicans widely expect the measure to die in the chamber, they are in for weeks of fierce pressure to advance it.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer addressed Trump in a late-night X post, pointing out that the president could simply release the files instead of cajoling his allies in Congress.

“Let’s make this easier,” Schumer wrote. “Just release the files now.”

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who authored a Senate version of the bill, is coordinating with Massie, and Democrats have some options to force the issue, including seeking to force a vote by unanimous consent or to amend unrelated legislation.

Trump appeared trained on keeping the House defections to a minimum as recently as Friday, when he sent multiple Truth Social posts where he accused Democrats of pushing an “Epstein Hoax … in order to deflect from all of their bad policies and losses” and ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Democrats’ connections to Epstein. The posts, according to three Republicans granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter, were part of an effort to limit mass GOP defections on this week’s vote.

“Some Weak Republicans have fallen into their clutches because they are soft and foolish,” he wrote, telling them, “don’t waste your time with Trump. I have a Country to run!”

Trump normally enjoys an iron grip over the House, where Republicans are rarely anything but subservient to the president. He’s seen hints of pushback recently on key nominees and his demand to eliminate the Senate filibuster.

But he’s lost all control over the chamber when it comes to the Epstein matter, and Hill Republicans have grown increasingly wary of Trump’s fixation on the issue, according to five other people granted anonymity to describe internal GOP conversations.

One senior Republican marveled at Trump’s “erratic” and unsettling effort last week to kill the bipartisan end-around led by Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). That included pulling Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) into the White House Situation Room to try to remove her name from the discharge petition she had signed alongside GOP Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

The effort failed, and Trump administration officials privately warned that Mace’s defiance is likely to cost her an endorsement in the South Carolina governor’s race. One of her Republican opponents in that campaign, Rep. Ralph Norman, suggested he may not vote for the bill in an interview last week: “Oh, I don’t know. We’ll see.”
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A major source of Trump’s obsession over the House vote is Massie, who has opposed a raft of major GOP legislation, including spending bills and the megabill that passed this summer. Trump is now intent on ousting Massie in next year’s primary, but the Kentucky Republican has now managed to outmaneuver the president despite Trump and Johnson trying to hold him off for months.

Massie said in an interview that the Epstein vote will reflect how Republicans are starting to take stock of a post-Trump world.

“They need to look past 2028 and wonder if they want this on their record for the rest of their political career,” he said.

“Right now, it’s okay to cover up for pedophiles because the president will take up for you if you’re in the red districts — that’s the deal,” Massie later told reporters. “But that deal only works as long as he’s popular or president. … If they’re thinking about the right thing to do, that’s pretty obvious: You vote for it.”

That is reflected in the broad swath of House Republicans who said last week they were ready to back Massie, ranging from conservative hard-liners to moderate dealmakers to endangered swing-seat targets, including Rep. Tom Barrett of Michigan and Reps. Rob Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie of Pennsylvania.

“If it’s on the floor, I’ll be voting for it,” Mackenzie said.

On the right flank, Reps. Eli Crane of Arizona, Warren Davidson of Ohio, Eric Burlison of Missouri and Tim Burchett of Tennessee said they planned to support the measure. (Burchett sought to pass it on a voice vote last week, but Democrats insisted on a recorded vote.)

More centrist-leaning Reps. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, Kevin Kiley of California and Don Bacon of Nebraska said they would vote for the bill. Bacon, who is retiring, suggested the last-minute pressure campaign from the White House was ill-advised.

“The train has already left the station, so we should move on,” he said.

Some key GOP blocs remained split on the matter, including the hard-line House Freedom Caucus and the Republican Study Committee, composed of 189 conservatives. But the legislation is likely to get universal Democratic support in addition to considerable GOP backing, Khanna said before Trump reversed course.

“While there might be pressure from the White House, there is even more pressure from the public,” he said. “People are sick of our system protecting the Epstein class.”