We will put it up for a vote when we return next week, promises Speaker Mike Johnson shortly after a majority of the House members signed such a demand.
This happened after a dramatic 24 hours, when Democrats on the House Oversight Committee first released three Trump-related emails and Republicans later published over 20,000 pages from their investigation, material that resulted in major headlines.
“Bring down” Trump?
According to the documents, the president was well aware of what was going on behind Epstein's walls, but did not participate in the abuse.
“Trump knew about it. (He) came to my house many times during that period,” Epstein wrote in an email to himself in February 2019 – a few months before he was arrested on suspicion of, among other things, trafficking and abusing underage girls. In the text, he notes that Trump “never got a massage.”
This contradicts Trump's own statement that he did not know about Epstein's dealings with minors until it became known through a legal settlement in 2008, writes The Washington Post . The president has claimed that he only knew Epstein socially in Palm Beach, Florida, where both had houses, and that there was a falling out between them in the mid-00s.
But in the released documents, Jeffrey Epstein presents himself as a person who knew Trump well and could "bring him down," writes The New York Times .
“Of course he knew about the girls,” read a message from Epstein to author Michael Wolff in 2019.
In another email, Epstein wrote to his associate Ghislaine Maxwell that a potential victim had spent “hours at my house with him (Trump).” The victim was later named as Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who became world-famous when she accused Britain’s then-Prince Andrew of rape and Epstein of human trafficking—but who testified that Trump never even flirted with her.
Unfortunate decision
The issue of the “Epstein files” has stirred heated emotions in the United States for years. During last year’s election campaign, Donald Trump promised to release all documents, including a notorious “client list.”
But after the president moved into the White House, he seems to have changed his mind. When The Wall Street Journal published a tribute to Epstein in the form of a drawing of a naked woman with a signature that appears to be Trump's, the president sued the newspaper for ten billion dollars.
The vote in the House of Representatives could be troublesome for some Republicans who will have to choose whether to put their loyalty to Trump ahead of principles of openness.
