Both US House & Senate overwhelmingly vote to release Jeffrey Epstein files

The United States’ political class has finally found a subject they can agree on, as the U.S. House of Representatives has voted nearly unanimously to release the “Epstein Files”.

The bill is sure to reach U.S. President Donald Trump’s desk, as the Senate passed a rare unanimous consent vote, which means the bill will progress unchanged through the upper House.

427 - 1

On Nov. 18 (U.S. time), the House passed Republican representative Thomas Massie’s motion almost unanimously, 427 votes to one, as reported by the BBC.

This included 216 Republicans and 211 Democrats, with three Republicans and two Democrats abstaining from the vote.

The sole vote against the motion was from Republican Clay Higgins.

He justified his vote by warning that the files contained the personal information of “thousands of innocent people”, such as witnesses, victims, and their family members; and that opening the files in the way Massie’s bill wanted would expose them all to a “rabid media”, as reported by the BBC.

The Epstein Files are a set of documents said to contain evidence that financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein facilitated the traffic and abuse of young girls for prominent individuals.

Epstein was previously convicted for his crimes and was facing fresh legal action when he committed suicide in his prison cell in 2019.

Discharge motion

This is the second vote on the Epstein files in the past fortnight.

An initial vote for a discharge motion to enable the Nov. 18 vote was required, but that garnered far less Republican support, with only four Republicans voting for it, just enough to get it passed.

The discharge motion was strongly opposed by Trump and Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, the latter of whom prevented a newly elected Democratic congressperson from taking her seat for nearly two months in order to prevent the vote.

Traitors

Trump himself was initially vociferously against the release of the Files.

Trump is a well-documented former associate of Epstein, with opponents claiming that the files deeply implicate him.

He had threatened the Republicans who had backed the initial bill with electoral consequences, including long-time backer Marjorie Taylor Greene, whom he called “Marjorie Traitor Greene”.

But in the past week, he has changed his tune, saying he would sign a bill if it reached him, and that the Republican Party had "nothing to hide".

Instead, he has called the files a "Democratic Hoax", claiming that "I DON'T CARE".

But Massie had strong words for his fellow Republicans, reminding them that Donald Trump’s electoral influence would not last beyond the 2026 midterm elections.

Currently serving his second term as president, Trump cannot run again for president in 2028.

Unanimous consent

Despite initial questions about whether the Republican-controlled Senate would pass the motion without modification, it was quickly put to rest.

The Hill, a U.S.-based politics outlet, reported that the Democratic Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, had received unanimous approval from 99 of his colleagues to “deem the bill passed” as soon as it was received from the House of Representatives.

The move, known as “unanimous consent”, is a rarely used Senate procedure that allows a House motion to move through the legislative process quickly, and is almost unheard of in an age where the two political parties can rarely find ways to agree on anything.

The approval came despite, as The Hill noted, several months during which Republican senators had questioned whether Congress had the power to force the White House to release all the files.

However, that process will not take place until Nov. 19.

Top image via AFP