President Donald Trump has signed a bill ordering the Justice Department to release unclassified records tied to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, setting off a heated political debate about privacy, accountability and whether revealing those files helps or harms victims and investigations.
Trump announced the signing with a bold post that began, “I HAVE JUST SIGNED THE BILL TO RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES!” He followed that with a longer statement noting he had asked congressional leaders to push the legislation and claiming the Justice Department “has already turned over close to fifty thousand pages of documents to Congress. Do not forget — The Biden Administration did not turn over a SINGLE file or page related to Democrat Epstein, nor did they ever even speak about him.”
In another quoted passage Trump said, “As I said on Friday night aboard Air Force One to the Fake News Media, 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, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown,'” showing he framed the action as both transparency and political pushback. The messaging underlines how the release is being sold to supporters as a corrective to prior administrations.
The House voted overwhelmingly to unseal the records, passing the measure by a 421–1 margin, and the Senate approved it by unanimous consent shortly after. The lone dissent came from Rep. Clay Higgins, who warned the bill “reveals and injures thousands of innocent people — witnesses, people who provided alibis, family members, etc.,” arguing that naming private figures could chill cooperation with law enforcement.
Speaker Mike Johnson supported the release but echoed concerns about exposing victims and undercover personnel, saying public disclosures could deter future whistleblowers and informants. Those worries are baked into the law, which allows the Justice Department to redact or withhold files that include victims’ names, child sex abuse materials, classified content or anything that might threaten an active probe.
The statute, called the Epstein Files Transparency Act, directs the Justice Department to put all unclassified records and investigative materials related to Epstein and Maxwell online in a searchable format within 30 days. It also covers materials tied to individuals referenced in prior cases, details about trafficking allegations, internal DOJ communications tied to the matter and records about the investigation into Epstein’s death.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said she would comply with the law after it was signed, signaling the department will move forward with the mandated public release while balancing redactions for sensitive content. The commitment sets up a tense scramble inside the DOJ to sort and scrub massive volumes of material while handling legitimate privacy and security concerns.
Critics on both sides have strong opinions: supporters of the move see it as overdue transparency about a sprawling network tied to a notorious predator, while opponents warn the public airing could harm victims and imperil undercover operations. Those tensions are visible in the way members of Congress rallied behind competing motions and released their own document troves in parallel.
Newly produced emails supplied to investigators included messages from Epstein referencing public figures, with one note reading, “i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. (VICTIM) spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there,” followed by Maxwell’s reply, “I have been thinking about that…”. Another email quoted Epstein telling an author that “of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop,” a line that mentions Trump but does not allege proven wrongdoing.
Those exchanges underline a key legal point: while the documents are authentic in form, the statements they contain are not automatically verified and do not equate to convictions. Trump has not been formally accused in connection with Epstein’s crimes, and no law enforcement records publicly link him to criminal activity tied to Epstein.
Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges, and Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted on counts including sex trafficking of a minor and given a 20-year sentence. The release ordered by the new law will inevitably produce new debates about privacy, prosecutorial discretion and how public records should be handled when they touch on both powerful figures and vulnerable victims.
