Donald Trump claims he ‘has nothing to hide’ and wants Epstein files to be released

The US President changes mind and is backing the release of more of the Jeffrey Epstein case files as he argues he has ‘nothing to hide’

Donald Trump has made a U-turn decision and is urging Republicans to vote to release the Jeffrey Epstein case files as he claims he has ‘nothing to hide’

Despite previously fighting the proposal to make the documents public the US President is now backing the vote to do so.

In his latest post on social media Donald Trump said: “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.”

Democrats and some Republicans have been pushing to make more of the documents from the case public. The bill would force the Justice Department to release all files and communications related to Epstein, as well as any information about the investigation into his death in federal prison.

Any information regarding Epstein’s victims or ongoing federal investigations would be redacted from the files. Republican representative Thomas Massie said: “There could be 100 or more, I’m hoping to get a veto-proof majority on this legislation when it comes up for a vote.”

Mr Massie and Democratic representative Ro Khanna introduced a discharge petition in July to force a vote on their bill. That is a rarely successful tool that allows a majority of members to bypass House leadership and force a floor vote.

Speaker Mike Johnson had panned the discharge petition effort and sent members home early for their August recess when the Republicans’ legislative agenda was upended in the clamouring for an Epstein vote.

Democrats also contend the seating of representative Adelita Grijalva was stalled to delay her becoming the 218th member to sign the petition and gain the threshold needed to force a vote. She became the 218th signature moments after taking the oath of office last week.

Mr Massie said Mr Johnson, Mr Trump and others who have been critical of his efforts would be “taking a big loss this week”.

“I’m not tired of winning yet, but we are winning,” Mr Massie said.

Mr Johnson seems to expect the House will decisively back the Epstein bill.

“We’ll just get this done and move it on. There’s nothing to hide,” he said, adding that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been releasing “far more information than the discharge petition, their little gambit”.

The vote comes at a time when new documents have created further questions about Epstein and his associates. One of which is an email from 2019 that Epstein wrote to a journalist that said Mr Trump “knew about the girls”.

The White House has accused Democrats of selectively leaking the emails to smear the Republican president. Mr Johnson said Mr Trump “has nothing to hide from this”.

“They’re doing this to go after President Trump on this theory that he has something to do with it. He does not,” he said.

Mr Trump’s association with Epstein is well-established and the president’s name was included in records that his own Justice Department released in February as part of an effort to satisfy public interest in information from the sex-trafficking investigation.

Mr Trump has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein and the mere inclusion of someone’s name in files from the investigation does not imply otherwise.

Epstein, who killed himself in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial, also had many prominent acquaintances in political and celebrity circles, including Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.

In response to the most recent leaked emails The White House responded: “The Democrats selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump. The ‘unnamed victim’ referenced in these emails is the late Virginia Giuffre, who repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and “couldn’t have been friendlier” to her in their limited interactions.

“The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago for being a creep to his female employees, including Giuffre.

“These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again.”