The Epstein case: what you need to know
At the end of 2025, the US House of Representatives was to vote on the release of documents in the case of financier Jeffrey Epstein, who had previously been convicted of sexual offences. Against this backdrop, US President Donald Trump abruptly changed his rhetoric and publicly called on House Republicans to support the disclosure of the materials.
Back in the summer, Trump called these documents «lies» and «boring», and criticised those who demanded their disclosure. At the same time, during the 2024 presidential campaign, he promised to get the Epstein files declassified. Now, the president explains his change of position by saying that he has "nothing to hide", as he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.
Pressure on the White House intensified after Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released three emails that they said were among about 20,000 documents subpoenaed from companies linked to Epstein. These emails mention the current US president. They refer to Epstein's correspondence with his former partner Gislain Maxwell, who was convicted of complicity in sexual offences.
After that, not only Democrats started talking about their readiness to vote for the disclosure of materials. Some Republicans have also made it clear that they will support the demand for the prosecutor's office to release the documents, even along with Trump's opponents. One of the initiators of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, Congressman Thomas Massie, said that there could be 100 or more votes for this initiative among Republicans.
If the bill passes in the House of Representatives, it will move to the Senate, where it needs at least 60 votes out of 100 to pass. This means that at least 13 Republican senators, as well as two senators who do not belong to the two major parties, must vote in favour of the bill along with the Democrats. The document will then be submitted to the president for signature. If Trump refuses to sign the law, a two-thirds vote in both houses will be required to override the veto.
The political resonance is already noticeable. The Epstein files controversy has exposed conflicts within the MAGA camp. In particular, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green publicly supported the release of the documents, after which her relationship with Trump entered an acute phase. An additional marker of the tension was a Reuters and Ipsos poll that showed an increase in distrust of Trump from 52 per cent in May to 58 per cent in November, while the level of support remained around 40 per cent.
The story also brought attention back to Trump's long-standing ties to Epstein. The two have been in the same business and social circles since the late 1980s, and in 1990 Epstein bought a house about 3 kilometres from Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Flight logs show that Trump flew on Epstein's private jet seven times between 1993 and 1997. At the same time, Trump himself denies any involvement in Epstein's crimes.
Epstein was found dead in a US prison in 2019, where he had been under arrest. In 2008, he served 13 months in prison for solicitation of prostitution, and in 2019, he was charged with new charges related to human trafficking for sexual exploitation. After his death, Trump called for a full investigation.
Photo: DW
