Speaker Mike Johnson has said that the vote will take place in the afternoon, that is, late Tuesday evening Swedish time.
Trump loyalist Johnson has opposed the vote, as the president earlier this year said he opposed the release of the Epstein documents. But last week, a majority of House members signed a bipartisan initiative to force the vote – and on Sunday, the president also reversed course.
Signing?
"We have nothing to hide," Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social, calling the controversy surrounding the material a "Democratic hoax."
If the House of Representatives gives the green light, the Senate must also vote yes before Trump can sign the proposal - something he has said he will do if it lands on his desk, according to US media.
The issue of the “Epstein files” has stirred heated emotions in the US for years. During last year’s election campaign, Donald Trump promised to release all documents, including a notorious “client list” that he claimed included powerful Democrats, which went down well with his supporters in the Maga (“Make America Great Again”) movement.
Sued newspaper
But after he moved into the White House in January, the president, who hung out with Epstein in the 90s and 00s, changed his mind. And when The Wall Street Journal published a tribute to Epstein in the form of a drawing of a naked woman's body with a signature that appeared to be Trump's, the president sued the newspaper for ten billion dollars.
Last week, a number of Epstein emails were released by the powerful House of Representatives oversight committee. They included information suggesting that Trump knew about the sexual abuse Epstein was engaging in during the same period the two were dating, but that the future president did not participate in it.
This contradicts Trump's own statement that he did not know about Epstein's association with minors until it became known through a legal settlement in 2008. The president has also said that he broke up with Epstein in the mid-00s.
Tina Magnergård Bjers/TT
Background: The twists surrounding Jeffrey Epstein
TT
An investigation into businessman Jeffrey Epstein began in 2005 after a 14-year-old girl told police she had been molested by him at his home in Palm Beach, Florida. The investigation grew and in 2007 he was indicted in federal court.
After a plea deal with prosecutors, Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in prison for sex trafficking in 2008. He was released after 13 months.
The case received renewed attention in 2018 after a series of articles in the Miami Herald in which several women came forward and accused Epstein of sexual assault during the period 2001 to 2005.
In July 2019, Epstein was arrested at an airport in New Jersey. The new charges against him concerned the abuse of dozens of underage girls between 2002 and 2005. According to the prosecution, Epstein tried to buy the silence of witnesses with millions of dollars. Epstein denies the crime.
On August 10, 2019, Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his cell in Manhattan's New York City jail. He was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. It is believed he took his own life, but this is disputed.
A prominent plaintiff against Epstein was Virginia Giuffre, who died earlier this year. She claimed that Epstein’s convicted associate Ghislaine Maxwell discovered her at Donald Trump’s Florida spa when she was 17 and hired her as Epstein’s masseuse—his “sex slave.” Giuffre also accused Britain’s Prince Andrew of rape, which ended in an out-of-court settlement between the parties.
