Both the House and Senate acted decisively Tuesday to pass a bill to force the Justice Department to publicly release its files on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
When a small, bipartisan group of House lawmakers introduced a petition in July to maneuver around Speaker Mike Johnson’s control of the House floor, it appeared a longshot effort.
The president in recent days said he would sign the bill. And just hours after the House vote, senators agreed to approve it unanimously, skipping a formal roll call.
The bipartisan work in Congress Tuesday further showed the pressure mounting on lawmakers and the Trump administration to meet long-held demands that the Justice Department release its case files on Epstein, a well-connected financier who killed himself in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial in 2019 on charges he sexually abused and trafficked underage girls.
For survivors of Epstein’s abuse, passage of the bill was a watershed moment in a years-long quest for accountability.
“These women have fought the most horrific fight that no woman should have to fight. And they did it by banding together and never giving up," said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as she stood with some of the abuse survivors outside the Capitol Tuesday morning.
“That’s what we did by fighting so hard against the most powerful people in the world, even the president of the United States, in order to make this vote happen today,” added Greene, a Georgia Republican.
In the end, only one lawmaker in Congress opposed the bill. Rep. Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican, was the only “nay” vote in the House's 427-1 tally. He said he worried the legislation could lead to the release of information on innocent people mentioned in the federal investigation.
The bill forces the release within 30 days of all files and communications related to Epstein, as well as any information about the investigation into his death in federal prison. It would allow the Justice Department to redact information about Epstein’s victims or continuing federal investigations, but not information due to “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.”
Even before the bill's passage Tuesday, thousands of pages of emails and other documents from Epstein's estate have been released from an investigation by the House Oversight Committee.
Those documents show Epstein's connections to global leaders, Wall Street powerbrokers, and influential political figures. In the United Kingdom, King Charles III stripped his disgraced brother Prince Andrew of his remaining titles and evicted him from his royal residence after pressure to act over his relationship with Epstein.
Trump has said he cut ties with Epstein years ago, but tried for months to move past the demands for disclosure.
Still, many in the Republican base continued to demand the release of the files. Adding to that pressure, survivors of Epstein's abuse rallied outside the Capitol Tuesday morning. Bundled in jackets against the November chill and holding photos of themselves as teenagers, they recounted their stories of abuse.
The group of women also met with Johnson and rallied outside the Capitol in September, but have had to wait months for the vote.
Rather than waiting until next week for the discharge position to officially take effect, Johnson held the vote under a procedure that requires a two-thirds majority.
But Johnson also spent a morning news conference listing off problems that he sees with the legislation. He argued that the bill could have unintended consequences by disclosing parts of federal investigations that are usually kept private, including information on victims.
Still, he voted for the bill. “None of us want to go on record and in any way be accused of not being for maximum transparency,” he explained.
Meanwhile, the bipartisan pair who sponsored the bill, Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., warned senators against doing anything that would “muck it up,” saying they would face the same public uproar that forced both Trump and Johnson to back down.
“We’ve needlessly dragged this out for four months,” Massie said, adding that those raising problems with the bill “are afraid that people will be embarrassed. Well, that’s the whole point here.”
As senators gathered in the chamber Tuesday evening for the first votes of the week, it became clear no one would object to passing the bill as written.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called to pass the bill by unanimous consent.
A World Without Exploitation projection is seen on the wall of the National Gallery of Art calling on Congress to vote yes on the Epstein files transparency act in Washington, Monday, Nov. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
