The US House of Representatives has taken the significant step of ordering President Donald Trump's Justice Department to publicly release all of its investigative files into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, after months of nasty infighting within the GOP.
The measure — which remarkably won support from nearly every Republican — now heads to the Senate, where Republican leaders must quickly decide if they will send it to Trump's desk.
The president said he would sign the bill if Congress passed it, after months of calling the issue a"Democratic hoax".
In the end, even Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team backed the measure, despite spending the summer and fall trying to quash Washington's obsession with the Epstein files, while insisting the bill did not do enough to protect victims' privacy.
Johnson said Tuesday he had urged his Senate counterpart, Majority Leader John Thune, to add key protections if he did decide to take up the measure.
Trump on Monday saidhe would sign the bill if it passes both chambers of Congress, adding,"Let the Senate look at it".
The vote on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT) also provides a further boost to the demands that the Justice Department release its case files on Epstein, a well-connected financier who died of suicide in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial in 2019 on charges he sexually abused and trafficked underage girls.
Sky Roberts, the Brother of prominent Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, said Epstein and Maxwell trafficked her to"a network of the rich and powerful princes, prime ministers, politicians, financiers and lawyers" who "committed unspeakable acts against her".
"My sister is not a political tool for you to use. These survivors are not political tools for you to use. These are real stories, real trauma," he said, clearly emotional.
"We will not let Virginia's fight be in vain together. We will not let the predators win together."
Giuffre, whoseposthumous memoir was released last month this year after her death on her farm in Western Australia in April, has long alleged former prince Andrew Mountbatten Windsor assaulted her multiple times when she was a teenager, a claim the royal has strenuously denied.
Long-time Trump supporter Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene stood with some of the abuse survivors outside the Capitol on Tuesday morning (early Wednesday AEDT)
"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," she said.
"And that's what we did by fighting so hard against the most powerful people in the world, even the President of the United States.
"In order to make this vote happen today, I was called a traitor by a man that I fought for five, no, actually, six years for, and I gave him my loyalty for free."
A separate investigation conducted by the House Oversight Committee has released thousands of pages of emails and other documents from Epstein's estate, showing his connections to global leaders, Wall Street powerbrokers, influential political figures and Trump himself.
Trump has said he cut ties with Epstein years ago, but tried for months to move past the demands for disclosure. On Monday, he told reporters that Epstein was connected to more Democrats and that he didn't want the Epstein files to"detract from the great success of the Republican Party".
