United States President Donald Trump has announced he has signed a bill ordering the release of files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n
Trump made the announcement on social media late on Wednesday after months of pressure on his administration to disclose the full extent of Epstein\u2019s crimes and his connections to elites in politics, business and entertainment.<\/p>\n
Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list<\/p>\n
US Attorney General Pam Bondi had earlier told a news conference that the administration would \u201cfollow the law\u201d and \u201cencourage maximum transparency\u201d in the case.<\/p>\n
The Epstein Files Transparency Act, which passed the US Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support this week, compels the US Department of Justice to release all unclassified materials related to the disgraced financier in a \u201csearchable and downloadable format\u201d within 30 days.<\/p>\n
The legislation includes provisions allowing authorities to withhold child sex exploitation material and victims\u2019 identifying details as well as information that concerns active investigations or \u201cnational defense or foreign policy\u201d.<\/p>\n
But the text also stipulates that no record should be withheld on the basis of \u201cembarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary\u201d.<\/p>\n
While thousands of files related to Epstein have been made public, a judge who presided over a case involving the financier earlier this year said the total trove of files came to roughly 100,000 pages.<\/p>\n
Epstein\u2019s numerous elite connections, enormous wealth and mysterious background have fuelled speculation and conspiracy theories for years.<\/p>\n
Official explanations, including a joint memo by Trump\u2019s Justice Department and FBI that concluded there was not evidence to support the prosecution of Epstein associates, have repeatedly failed to quell public intrigue in the case.<\/p>\n
In announcing the move to release the files, Trump, who had resisted calls for greater transparency in the case, sought to cast the controversy around Epstein as a greater liability for Democrats than his fellow Republicans.<\/p>\n
Writing on his platform Truth Social, Trump called Epstein a \u201clifelong\u201d Democrat and noted his associations with high-profile Democrats, including former President Bill Clinton and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, who on Wednesday took leave from teaching at Harvard University amid the fallout of emails detailing his friendly relationship with the late financier.<\/p>\n
Neither Clinton nor Summers have been implicated in any criminal wrongdoing in their associations with Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while facing sex trafficking charges.<\/p>\n
\u201cPerhaps the truth about these Democrats, and their associations with Jeffrey Epstein, will soon be revealed, because I HAVE JUST SIGNED THE BILL TO RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES!\u201d Trump wrote on Truth Social.<\/p>\n
Epstein\u2019s associations spanned the political aisle, including prominent Republicans as well as Democrats.<\/p>\n
Trump was himself friendly with Epstein during the 1990s and early 2000s, and his name featured prominently in Epstein emails released by US lawmakers this month.<\/p>\n
In one email sent in 2011, Epstein told his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell that Trump had \u201cspent hours\u201d at his home with a sex trafficking victim.<\/p>\n
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and repeatedly insisted he had no knowledge of Epstein\u2019s crimes.<\/p>\n
After Trump\u2019s announcement, critics raised doubts that his administration would follow through on its commitment to transparency in the case.<\/p>\n
US Senator Adam Schiff, a Democrat who represents California, said he was \u201cnot at all confident\u201d that the legislation would be implemented as written.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think if past is prelude, what we can expect is more stonewalling, more cover-up, more inartful ways of explaining why they\u2019re covering up,\u201d Schiff said in an interview with MS NOW host Chris Hayes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think when this chapter of history is written, it will be a test case in how not to handle a crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"United States President Donald Trump has announced he has signed a bill ordering the release of files related…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":391481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[69,50,10409,67,132,68,72],"class_list":{"0":"post-391480","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-sexual-assault","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-us-canada"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115580251946286314","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}