Every Pa. lawmaker votes to release Jeffrey Epstein records as Congress passes bill after Trump’s reversal

WASHINGTON — Congress passed legislation Tuesday to require President Donald Trump’s administration to release troves of records related to notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein after months of pressure from Democrats and survivors on the issue.

The U.S. House voted 427-1 to pass the bill on Tuesday, prompting lawmakers in the chamber to cheer. The legislation was then rapidly passed by the U.S. Senate through unanimous consent, a process that skips debate when no senator objects to a bill.

Despite the overwhelming bipartisan consensus, Tuesday’s House vote followed months of pushing by Democrats to bring it the floor as Trump unsuccessfully lobbied to prevent it from receiving a debate.

The president abruptly changed his stance on the bill this week after it became clear it had enough Republican support to pass against his objections. The veto-proof bill now heads to Trump’s desk for his signature.

U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan, a freshman Republican who represents Northeastern Pennsylvania, told The Inquirer after the vote that his office “had a lot of phone calls” about the bill.

“We listened to our constituents... and I want to thank the people at home for bringing this to our attention,” he said outside the House chamber.

U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican, was the sole no vote. Five House members did not vote.

Trump said this week he would sign the bill into law, but he doesn’t actually need congressional approval to order the release of the files and could have already done so — a fact noted by U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans in the lead-up to the vote.

“Let’s be clear — Donald Trump doesn’t have to wait until Congress votes on this resolution,” Evans, a retiring Philadelphia Democrat, said in a Monday post on X. “If he wanted to, he could tell the Justice Department to release the Epstein files TODAY.”

The bill, called the Epstein Files Transparency Act, requires the Department of Justice to publish all unclassified files related to the prosecution and investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, a well-connected financier and convicted sex offender who was found dead in his jail cell in August 2019 and determined to have died by suicide after being federally charged with sex trafficking underage girls. After his death, his close associate Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of sexually exploiting and abusing girls with him over the course of a decade.

The bill was led by U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who grew up in Bucks County, and U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who frequently breaks with party leadership. U.S. Reps. Mary Gay Scanlon and Chris Deluzio, both Pennsylvania Democrats, were cosponsors.

Trump suggested on the campaign trail that he would release files related to the Epstein investigation, but after his administration faced uproar over their lackluster release of information surrounding the investigation, he began discrediting the cause.

Trump is mentioned numerous times in files that have already been released, including in an email in which Epstein claims Trump “spent hours at my house” with a young woman who later said she was a victim of Epstein, the New York Times reported last week. The president was neighbors with Epstein in Florida and was photographed with him at numerous social occasions in the 1990s and 2000s. He has called the efforts for more transparency a Democratic “hoax” that had fooled “stupid” Republicans who would be committing a “hostile act” by supporting the release.

Bresnahan was hesitant to answer whether any of the mentions of the president concern him.

“I saw some of the email threads; a lot of it was snippets. I don’t know where it came from,” said Bresnahan, who represents a swing district.

“I want to look at the whole comprehensive picture,” he added.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) wasn’t going to allow the bill to be voted on the floor, so Khanna and Massie successfully forced the vote through a discharge petition, which was supported by all House Democrats and just three other Republicans — U.S. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, and Lauren Boebert of Colorado.

Massie and Khanna started to gather signatures in September and got the 218th needed on Wednesday last week when U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D. Ariz.) was sworn into office after winning a special election in September.

U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle, a Philadelphia Democrat, blamed the delay for Grijalva’s swearing in on Trump and Johnson‘s resistance to the bill getting to the floor.

“There is a reason why Donald Trump has worked so hard to keep these Epstein files covered up,” he said in a video he shared on social media.

The bill reaching the floor put Republicans in a new bind: their stance on the matter would be on the record. They had to choose whether their loyalty to Trump would outweigh pressure from constituents on the matter.

Once it became clear the president wouldn’t prevail, Trump had a complete about-face Sunday night and called for lawmakers to support the bill.

“House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party,” he posted on Truth Social.

“I DON’T CARE!” he added in the post and claimed that the files are a “curse on the Democrats, not us.”

Khanna said that almost 100 Republicans would have voted for the bill before Trump changed course in an interview with The New York Times.

“Trump saw his MAGA coalition was splintering and the last thing he could have had is a hundred Republicans vote for a Democratic bill in defiance of what he wanted,” he said in the interview. “Obviously, he has enough political instincts to realize how much he was losing on this issue.”

Once Trump signaled support for the bill, Khanna said he would “be surprised if it’s not close to unanimous.”

A separate House Oversight Committee investigation has released thousands of files from Epstein’s estate that show his connections spanning from Trump to influential leaders on Wall Street and across the globe. The Wall Street Journal also revealed over the summer a sexually explicit birthday message that appeared to be from the president to Epstein.

Trump has since called on the Justice Department to investigate ties between his political adversaries and Epstein, particularly the Clintons.

Survivors of Epstein’s abuse rallied outside the Capitol in the cold Tuesday morning.

Liz Stein, a survivor of Epstein’s abuse, said in a statement that she hopes “our elected leaders show the courage to stand with survivors.”

“Those of us directly impacted and harmed by the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell deserve justice and for the world to know our story,” she said. “It’s time for real accountability and true transparency.”

U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Bucks County Republican and former FBI agent who represents a purple district, had been quiet on the issue.

World Without Exploitation, an anti-human trafficking group that has called for the release of all Epstein files, put a billboard up in Fitzpatrick’s district that says: “Courage is Contagious: Release ALL The Epstein Files.”

Fitzpatrick was also the subject of digital ads from the Democratic National Committee about the Epstein files over the summer that called him one of Trump’s “sycophantic enablers.”

Even though no Pennsylvania Republicans signed onto the petition to allow a vote on the bill, some had previously indicated that they wanted the records released.

Bresnahan said on FOX56 WOLF on Friday that he would vote to release the files while making sure victims are protected. He told The Inquirer after the vote that he made that decision “weeks ago.”

When asked whether he was surprised at the near-unanimous support from his Republican peers, he said he “really wasn’t talking to a lot of my peers as to where they were going to be on it.”

Other Republicans made statements over the summer after the Justice Department said it would not release any more files. Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested in February that she had Epstein’s “client list,” but the department released files that were long in the public eye before claiming in July that Epstein didn’t actually have a list of clients.

U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, a freshman Republican who represents the Lehigh Valley, said during a telephone town hall in July that he would support measures to release DOJ files on Epstein if Trump’s administration doesn’t do more, NPR reported. He echoed that position Monday night, according to news reports.

“I know they have not released as much as I would like to see to date, but hopefully they’re going to be doing that,” he said in July. “And if not, then Congress should potentially step in and compel them to do that because again, the American people deserve to have full transparency and information about what is in those files, and ultimately, we’re going to get there.”

U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, a Trump ally who represents parts of Central Pennsylvania, shared a letter to Bondi on July 18 expressing “serious concern” over how the Epstein case had been handled and said it “remains one of the most troubling examples of apparent failures within our justice system.”

He said the Trump administration’s handling of the case at that point had “only heightened public distrust.” He cited how the administration’s February 2025 release of documents “contained little new information” and its pivot on a supposed client list.

“The continued secrecy surrounding these records undermines public confidence in the Justice Department’s commitment to justice,” he said at the time, requesting a special prosecutor to investigate the handling of the case.

Perry supported a Democratic motion in July to subpoena the Justice Department for the Epstein files in an effort led by U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, a progressive Democrat from Pittsburgh. He also backed motions to subpoena former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton related to the case.

Fitzpatrick, Perry, Mackenzie, and Bresnahan all represent districts that will be targeted by Democrats during next year’s midterms.

Also in July, U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser (R., Luzerne) called for the release of “all the pertinent, credible Epstein files” but focused squarely on Clinton.

Other Republicans in the state have been pretty quiet on the matter.

Lee, the Pittsburgh Democrat who led the summer subpoena effort, said in a post on X after the vote that the Department of Justice has “slow-walked” the release of files for months and echoed that Trump hasn’t acted on his ability to compel the department to release the files.

“No matter how wealthy or well-connected, every person who is complicit, enabled, or abused women and girls will be brought to justice,” she added.