Victims of Jeffrey Epstein have welcomed the nearly unanimous vote in the US Congress for a bill ordering the release of investigative files on the case, calling it a turning point and a major success after years of pressure.
The vote comes after years of allegations that powerful individuals - including former US presidents, billionaires, celebrities and royals - were linked to Epstein, a convicted sex offender. While most are not suspected of specific crimes, many of them are anxiously awaiting the release of the dossier.
President Donald Trump's administration has been trying for weeks to slow or prevent a vote on legislation that would require the release of investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein, according to Reuters. After weeks of resistance, Trump reversed course on Sunday night and called on the House of Representatives to vote on the legislation. At the same time, the White House has been trying to push through amendments in the Senate that would limit the scope of the release, according to sources.
The House and Senate decision has instilled a new sense of hope among survivors, leading them to believe that the truth may finally become available to the public, but they emphasize that the fight is not over yet.
Hayley Robson, one of the victims, told CNN that the Congressional decision was a turning point, but not the end of their journey: "We have to be brutally honest with ourselves... we still have a long way to go," Robson said.
Alicia Arden, who reported Epstein back in 1997, told CNN that she felt "like a weight had been lifted off my back. I never dreamed it would get this far," she said, adding that she hopes President Donald Trump will sign the bill.
Despite Justice Secretary Pam Bondi saying yesterday that the department would release files from the Epstein investigation within 30 days, some Democratic lawmakers have expressed concern about whether the documents will be released in full. Arden said it would be a “slap in the face” to the victims, and her lawyer, Gloria Allred, added that the Justice Department is no longer seen as a neutral institution.
"It has become an extension of the president. We have to be careful, but it is important that we have at least reached this point."
Dani Benski, who met Epstein as a young ballerina, spent the night with the family of the late Virginia Giuffre, one of the most famous victims who committed suicide in April 2025. Her memoir, “Nobody’s Girl,” was published posthumously last October. “It kills me that she’s not here to see this. It’s so wrong. It’s devastating to think that we’re doing this without her,” Benski said.
Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to felony prostitution under Florida law and served 13 months in prison. The U.S. Department of Justice indicted him in 2019 on charges of trafficking minors for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Epstein pleaded not guilty to those charges before his death.
His former friendship with Trump is weighing heavily on the president's second term, especially after Trump himself fueled speculation by spreading conspiracy theories about Epstein's 2019 death in a Manhattan jail.
Trump has denied any involvement, and the investigative materials have so far revealed no specific compromising details, although House Democrats last week released a 2019 email sent by Epstein in which he cryptically claimed that Trump “knew about the girls.”
Despite White House efforts to amend the bill in the Senate and limit the scope of the disclosure, the president made a surprise move Sunday night to call on the House of Representatives to vote on the measure. After the Senate passed the bill unanimously, a senior White House official confirmed that Trump would sign the document as soon as he arrived.
Reuters reports that the episode has exposed the limits of Trump's influence in the Republican Party and further damaged his relations with some allies in Congress. At the same time, the issue has negatively affected his public approval rating, which has fallen to its lowest level this year. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, only 44 percent of Republicans believe that Trump is handling the Epstein situation well.
Another 60 percent of Americans believed the federal government was covering up information about Epstein's death, and 70 percent believed it was covering up information about people involved in his sex crimes. Most of Trump's Republican supporters shared those beliefs.
The incident also soured relations with one of Trump's most loyal Republican allies in Congress, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said Trump was concerned that the focus on Epstein could distract from his other priorities.
"President Trump has never been against releasing the Epstein files, he has always been against Republicans falling into the trap of Democrats talking about this instead of focusing on the historic tax cuts he signed, the fact that not a single illegal immigrant has entered our country in the last five months, and the many other successes of the Trump administration on behalf of the American people," Jackson said.
Over the weekend, White House advisers were preparing for a period of “messaging and narrative management,” one source told Reuters, viewing the Senate as the last chance to influence how the legislation moves forward.
The White House over the weekend encouraged senators to portray any slowdown as responsible oversight of the process and distributed targeted "key messages" to vulnerable Republicans, encouraging them to present the vote as an act of transparency but to quickly return focus to issues of accessibility and other policy priorities.
By late Sunday afternoon, top White House advisers and the president himself had concluded that the strategy was failing and were trying to shift from preventing the vote to managing the fallout, the sources said.
The release of the files and the push for full transparency have already had consequences for some of the most influential people associated with Epstein. After Britain's Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was under public scrutiny for years for his closeness to Epstein and allegations that permanently removed him from public duties in the British monarchy, new political and reputational damage has now spilled over to the United States.
The latest "victim" of that wave is Larry Summers, former US Treasury Secretary and former president of Harvard University, who was forced to resign from the board of directors of OpenAI after published documents showed intensive and long-term communication with Epstein.
Summers announced yesterday that he was stepping down from all public duties in order to "rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to him."
Harvard has also launched an internal investigation.
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