Congress Passes Bill to Release Epstein Files

The measure heads to Trump’s desk to sign into law.
Published: 11/18/2025, 4:30:46 PM EST
The Senate has unanimously voted in favor of a bill to force the Justice Department to publicly release files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, sending it to President Donald Trump’s desk to be signed into law.

No senators objected to the measure during Tuesday’s vote.

Earlier in the day, the House voted in favor of the bill in a near-unanimous, 427–1 vote.

The bill mandates the DOJ turn over all “unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” and all classified information, within 30 days of becoming law.

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) was the lone "no" vote in the lower chamber.

Higgins explained his opposition to the legislation, citing privacy grounds.

“It abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America,” Higgins wrote on X. “As written, this bill reveals and injures thousands of innocent people — witnesses, people who provided alibis, family members, etc. If enacted in its current form, this type of broad reveal of criminal investigative files, released to a rabid media, will absolutely result in innocent people being hurt.”

Congress’s passage comes after Trump urged his party to support the release of the files.  Trump’s call to make the files public represents a reversal from his past stance when he described the push to disclose more details in the Epstein case as a distraction driven by the Democrats.

The House Oversight Committee had previously conducted a separate investigation and released thousands of pages of emails and other documents from Epstein’s estate that revealed his close connections to global leaders and powerful public figures.

The bill passed by the House and Senate would allow the Justice Department to redact information about Epstein’s victims or ongoing federal investigations, but not information due to “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.”

The bill’s passage follows a yearslong push by the survivors looking for accountability in the case.

Epstein reportedly killed himself in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial in 2019 on charges he sexually abused and trafficked underage girls.

“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 (R-Ga.) alongside some abuse survivors outside the Capitol Tuesday morning.

In addition to all communications, the measure also forces the release of any information about the investigation into Epstein’s death while in federal custody.

The bill needs Trump's signature to become law.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.