President Donald Trump asked the House GOP to vote in favor of releasing files linked to Jeffrey Epstein. The late-night announcement came Sunday, November 16, and marked a complete 180 on the issue after feuding with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) over it this very weekend. It was a presidential pivot to impress even the most stoic political pundits. But was he really convinced, or did he simply see an inevitable outcome and decide the optics were better on the winning side?
A Trump Turnaround?
“House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide,” Trump wrote on Truth Social at 8:15 Sunday night. There are a few possible reasons for this apparent reversal – and his post gives some clues as to which it might be.
Perhaps President Trump has “seen the light” – maybe he was against releasing the Epstein files but has been convinced. If so, that change of heart could have been inspired by anything from a few choice words in private from someone specific, a reaction to both the public and congressional momentum, or even just having given it more thought.
On Wednesday November 12, a discharge petition to force a vote on releasing the files gained its 218th signature after Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) was sworn in. The minority party in the House can use a discharge petition to force a vote even if the majority party and speaker don’t want it – so long as it gains at least a simple majority of votes. Several House Republicans joined the Democrats to pass the petition, and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) announced a vote to release the files would be held sometime this week.
Several GOP members have told the press they expect dozens of Republicans to back the bill, with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) specifically putting the number as high as 100.
In order for the bill to pass, though, it would have to clear both the House and Senate – which would require quite a few Republicans to clear the 60-vote hurdle – and then be signed by President Trump himself. Passage through the House now seems all but certain, and even in the Senate it’s quite likely. This momentum might well have led Trump to change his mind – or it might simply have convinced him that it’s better to step out of the way of this wave rather than continue standing in front of it.
As appearances go, resisting the release certainly isn’t a good look. Liberty Nation News Chief Political Correspondent Graham J. Noble explained on Sunday: “The Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein file saga has been a disaster from the beginning – at least in terms of optics.”
On the Other Hand
There’s another possibility, of course. Perhaps President Trump was never against the Epstein files being public to begin with, and the blow-up with Marjorie Taylor Greene wasn’t about the files themselves, but her insinuation that there might be something Trump wants to keep hidden.
As Mr. Noble pointed out in his article, much of information bundled into what’s being called the Epstein files is, in fact, already public information. As well, if there were any credible evidence that Trump had been involved in anything even remotely untoward, there’s no reason Democrats wouldn’t have released it to the public years ago. If nothing else, it would have behooved Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris as presidential candidates in 2024 to drop that bomb, if it existed, a month or two prior to the election. Talk about an October surprise!
In his Sunday-night social media post, the president continued: “The Department of Justice has already turned over tens of thousands of pages to the Public on ‘Epstein,’ are looking at various Democrat operatives (Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, Larry Summers, etc.) and their relationship to Epstein, and the House Oversight Committee can have whatever they are legally entitled to, I DON’T CARE!”
“All I do care about is that Republicans get BACK ON POINT,” he added. “Nobody cared about Jeffrey Epstein when he was alive and, if the Democrats had anything, they would have released it before our Landslide Election Victory. Some ‘members’ of the Republican Party are being ‘used,’ and we can’t let that happen. Let’s start talking about the Republican Party’s Record Setting Achievements, and not fall into the Epstein ‘TRAP,’ which is actually a curse on the Democrats, not us.”
It is suspect that Democrats only really brought up the Epstein files again after the record-breaking shutdown ended the way it did, leading to infighting over Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) leadership and whether it should continue. But if the Epstein files are indeed just a distraction, then ripping the band aid off, so to speak, may well be the best course of action. It would, as Trump said, allow the GOP to move beyond the issue and get on with its agenda.
