On November 19th, President Trump signed a bill to release the Epstein case files after resisting the release for months. Trump could have released the majority of the files on his own months ago but didn’t.

The bill requires the Justice Department to release all files and communications relating to the Epstein case within 30 days. The house passed the bill 427-1. The only house representative that voted not to release the files was Republican Representative Clay Higgins.

According to AP News, Higgins chose not to release the file because they “reveals and injures thousands of innocent people — witnesses, people who provided alibis, family members, etc… If enacted in its current form, this type of broad reveal of criminal investigative files, released to a rabid media, will absolutely result in innocent people being hurt,” (Groves, Nov. 18th).

The Senate unanimously agreed to pass the bill to President Trumps desk.

“Democrats have used the ‘Epstein’ issue, which affects them far more than the Republican Party, in order to try and distract from our AMAZING Victories,” said Trump in a Truthsocial post announcing the signing of the bill.

According to the Guardian Republican Alaskan senator Lisa Murkowski “People who feel very strongly about this will feel like they’ve been duped” if the justice department claims “we can’t release anything because of an active investigation… don’t think that that will help calm the suspicions many have harbored for a long while on this.”

In an interview with the BBC, Jonathan Entin, a constitutional law professor at Case Western Reserve University said “Simply letting anything out could reveal a lot of private information that’s not relevant or appropriate for public consumption.” (Debusmann Jr, Saad, Nov. 20).