United States President Donald Trump has called on Congress to make public additional files related to the notorious late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, in a reversal of his earlier opposition to the documents’ release.
“House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide,” Trump wrote late Sunday on his Truth Social platform.
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“We have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party.”
Trump’s shift comes as a growing number of Republican lawmakers have joined Democrats to back legislation that would compel the US Justice Department to unseal all remaining Epstein-related records.
Democrats and a handful of Republicans reached 218 signatures on Wednesday to force a floor vote on a bill to release the files within 30 days.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act appears poised to clear the House of Representatives, although its prospects in the Senate remain uncertain.
Republican Representative Thomas Massie, a co-sponsor of the bill, told ABC News on Sunday that as many as 100 Republicans could vote in favour.
The president’s remarks also come amid an unusually public rupture with parts of his political base, including a highly visible split with Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, once among his closest allies.
“The American people deserve full transparency into who was involved in these horrific acts”, Greene wrote on X on Thursday.
Trump has since distanced himself from Greene, saying he would endorse a challenger to her in next year’s midterm elections “if the right person runs”.
On Friday, he called her a “traitor” and a “ranting Lunatic”.
Greene has attributed the falling out to the Epstein files, though Trump has not directly linked their split to the issue.
As Republican support for the legislation grew, Trump accused some in his party of being manipulated, saying they were being “used”.
In recent weeks, Trump contacted at least two Republican lawmakers who signed on to the bill, including Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert.
The legislative push coincides with the release last week of emails that have reignited scrutiny of Trump’s relationship with Epstein. Among them is a 2019 email Epstein sent to a journalist claiming that Trump “knew about the girls”.
In another email sent in 2011, Epstein told his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell that Trump had “spent hours” at his home with a sex trafficking victim.
The White House has accused Democrats of releasing selective material to “create a fake narrative” and damage the president.
Trump, who had a 15-year friendship with Epstein, has denied any wrongdoing and has repeatedly insisted he had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.
His name appeared in previously released Justice Department records made public during efforts to address longstanding demands for transparency over the case.
In July, as criticism from within his base mounted over the handling of the government’s Epstein investigation, Trump lashed out at supporters who questioned the transparency of the process.
“Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit’, hook, line, and sinker. They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years”, he wrote on Truth Social, urging the FBI to investigate what he described as a criminal conspiracy against him.
Speaking to journalists around the same time, Trump said he did not “understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody”.
“It’s pretty boring stuff. It’s sordid, but it’s boring, and I don’t understand why it keeps going,” he said.
Epstein, who died by suicide in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, had longstanding ties to numerous prominent figures in politics, business, and entertainment.
Many of Epstein’s associates maintained close contact with him even after he was registered as a sex offender in 2008 following his conviction on two counts of soliciting prostitution, including from a minor.
Trump on Friday demanded that Attorney General Pam Bondi and the FBI investigate Epstein’s links to a number of his critics, including former US president Bill Clinton and ex-Harvard University President and one-time Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
Clinton and Summers have said they regret ever associating with Epstein and have not been implicated in any criminal wrongdoing involving the disgraced financier.