WASHINGTON — The House on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly to pass legislation to compel the Justice Department to release all its records related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — a major victory for lawmakers in both parties who’ve been leading the push for months.
As the final vote tally, 427-1, was read, several Epstein survivors who were sitting in the House gallery embraced each other and loud cheers went up through the chamber. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., was the only lawmaker to vote no.
The measure, which last week secured enough bipartisan support to head straight to the House floor, got another boost over the weekend, when President Donald Trump reversed his position and urged Republicans to support it.
Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif. — the bipartisan duo who co-authored the legislation and successfully forced the vote on the House floor, despite leadership’s objections — had spent the past few days trying to drive up the vote tally.
The near-unanimous vote will put enormous pressure on the Republican-controlled Senate to act.
GOP leaders in the upper chamber say they are all for transparency when it comes to Epstein, but they haven’t revealed whether they’ll bring the bill to the floor.
“We’ll take a look at that,” Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” “But we want transparency and accountability.”
The bill would require the attorney general to release in a searchable and downloadable format “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” related to Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, flight logs or travel records, people and entities connected with Epstein and internal emails, notes and other internal Justice Department communications.
Those records would need to be released “not later than 30 days” after enactment of the law.
The legislation says the attorney general may withhold or redact any information that identifies victims or would jeopardize an active federal investigation.
Ahead of the House vote, Massie, Khanna and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., held an emotional news conference outside the Capitol with more than a dozen Epstein survivors, urging senators to quickly take up the bill.
“You had Jeffrey Epstein, who literally set up an island of rape — a rape island — and you had rich and powerful men, some of the richest people in the world, who thought that they could hang out with bankers, buy off politicians and abuse and rape America’s girls with no consequence,” Khanna told reporters Tuesday.
“Because survivors spoke up, because of their courage, the truth is finally going to come out,” he added. “And when it comes out, this country is really going to have a moral reckoning.”
Massie said he was fine with Speaker Mike Johnson’s efforts to get the Senate to tweak language to protect the identities of victims. Higgins wrote on X that he would support the bill if that effort is successful, arguing that, as-written, it could reveal “thousands of innocent people — witnesses, people who provided alibis, family members, etc.”
“If you want to add some additional protections for these survivors, go for it,” Massie continued, but he warned that such changes should not delay or halt the release of the documents.
“If you do anything that prevents any disclosure, you are not for the people … Do not muck it up in the Senate,” he said.
“We fought the president, the attorney general, the FBI director, the speaker of the House and the vice president to get this win,” Massie said, adding that proponents deserve some “credit” because the administration now backs the legislation. “They are finally on the side of justice.”
