Congress passes bill to release ‘Epstein files’, sending measure to Trump

A bill allowing the release of government documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein has been approved by the US Congress.

The Senate quickly approved the measure by unanimous consent even before it was formally transmitted to the chamber on Tuesday in a 427-to-1 vote.

President Donald Trump will sign the bill into law once it is officially approved, according to the president’s statement.

Given his connections to powerful figures in the media, politics, and academia, including ties to Trump, the case of Epstein, a financier who sexually abused girls and young women for years, has sparked controversies in the US for years.

Trump initially opposed the release of the files, calling the late sex offender a “hoax,” before reversed course&nbsp this month.

The files should be released immediately so the president and his Department of Justice can access them without waiting for Congress to pass it. They are permitted to make them public.

Democrats Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, the bill’s sponsor, and Republicans Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who have been supporting the bill, gathered outside the US Capitol to speak with Epstein’s survivors.

To achieve this victory, we battled the president, the attorney general, the FBI director, the House speaker, and the vice president. Let’s give them some credit as well because they’re on our side right now, Massie told reporters.

One of the survivors, Jena-Lisa Jones, took a photo of herself at the time she met Epstein, who was 14 years old.

When I was a child, I. I was in the ninth grade. I was optimistic about life and what it would bring me. She claimed that he had taken a lot of my stuff.

In 2008, Epstein first admitted guilt to the charges of soliciting prostitution with a minor. He was permitted to work for 12 hours a day after serving 13 months in a minimum-security facility. Critics claimed that the punishment was too severe for the offence.

Federal authorities reopened the case against Epstein after the Miami Herald’s investigation into the case, detained him, and charged him with sex trafficking minors in 2019.

He was discovered dead in his New York City jail cell two months later. His death was declared a suicide.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Prince Andrew&nbsp, Prince Andrew, and former US President Bill Clinton were among Epstein’s collaborators over the years.

Epstein continued to have close personal connections with powerful people even after his first conviction, including Larry Summers, a former head of Harvard University, who recently expressed regret for keeping ties to the sex offender.

Trump criticized an ABC News reporter on Tuesday, pointing out that Epstein was a significant donor to Democratic politicians and asked him why he wouldn’t release the files on his own.

“You just keep working on the Epstein files,” the statement read. The US president claimed that what the Epstein is is a Democrat hoax.

When asked why Trump refused to release the documents earlier in the day, Massie asserted that Epstein’s connections were above partisan politics.