After months of playing defense for President Trump who has called the Jeffrey Epstein files a “hoax,” the White House and Republicans in Congress are scrambling to go on offense. Mr. Trump himself has now done a complete reversal on the Epstein issues, saying Monday that he will sign a bill which would force the Justice Department to release all of the Epstein files in its possession. At the same time, he is urging prosecutors to go after Democrats. 

The Epstein saga dominated coverage of Washington for weeks over the summer and into the fall after Mr. Trump began saying that no one should be looking into Epstein any more. After Attorney General Pam Bondi said in July that no additional files related to Epstein would be released, Mr. Trump said any of his supporters who were demanding more from the DOJ were being “conned” into believing a “hoax.”

Now that a bipartisan bill which would force a disclosure of the files is set to come up for a vote on Tuesday, Mr. Trump has changed his tune. Last week, he tried desperately to block a procedural measure which would allow lawmakers to bring up the bill over Speaker Mike Johnson’s objections. He went so far as to call one Republican congresswoman to the White House, where she met with Ms. Bondi, FBI director Kash Patel, and other officials in the Situation Room. 

That last-minute push did not work, and now in an apparent effort to save face, Mr. Trump is publicly stating that Republicans in the House should back the forced disclosure legislation. 

“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,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday night, after it became clear that the vast majority of House Republicans would vote to release the files. 

Before Mr. Trump made that endorsement of the bill, only one Republican member of the House said he would not vote to release the files. 

Mr. Trump and the White House now say that it is the Democrats who are being hypocrites because they have not been sufficiently investigating members of the Democratic Party. The president specifically mentions President Clinton, billionaire Reid Hoffman, and former treasury secretary Larry Summers as those Democrats who ought to be prosecuted. 

The president, in his Truth Social post, also endorsed Congressman James Comer’s investigation as head of the House Oversight Committee. 

“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 wrote. 

Still, Mr. Trump made it clear that he despises the fact that he even has to even address this whole affair. 

“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,” Mr. Trump wrote. 

After the Epstein files disclosure bill is passed by the House on Tuesday, it will then head to the Senate, where lawmakers are already hoping for a vote. It would take 60 senators voting for the bill in order for it to pass. 

Mr. Trump confirmed to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday that he would sign the bill if it reaches his desk. 

On Monday, the White House put out a memo accusing Democrats of not embracing “transparency” with respect to Epstein. 

“It’s time for Democrats to answer for their longstanding ties to Epstein. Then, we can get back to what matters to the American people,” White House staff wrote, including a list of prominent Democrats who had ties to Epstein. The Democrats listed in that memo — Messrs. Clinton, Hoffman, and Summers — have all denied that they were ever involved in any kind of sexual abuse scheme when they were friends with Epstein. 

Another Democrat receiving scrutiny for her ties to Epstein is Delegate Stacey Plaskett, a non-voting member of the House of Representatives from the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Epstein’s famous island was located. It was disclosed this past week that Ms. Plaskett was texting Epstein during a congressional hearing with Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen. Epstein was giving Ms. Plaskett advice on what questions to ask Mr. Cohen during that hearing. 

Democrats on the Oversight Committee have promised that they are moving forward with their investigation into Epstein with favor toward members of their party. Some of the records released already show how close Epstein was to both Mr. Clinton — who wrote Epstein a note on his 50th birthday praising his “childlike curiosity” — and Mr. Summers, who, according to emails released by the Oversight Committee, was seeking Epstein’s advice long after he pleaded guilty to one charge of soliciting a minor in 2008. 

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a former Harvard Law School professor whose husband still teaches at the university, told CNN on Monday that she believes that Harvard should sever all ties with Mr. Summers. He served as president of the university from 2001 to 2006. 

Republicans on the Oversight Committee — who had been expressing hope that this Epstein investigation would be bipartisan — say that Democrats are actively twisting the facts of the case in order to make the president look bad. 

In a string of posts on X on Monday morning, the committee accused Democrats of selectively redacting names in certain emails and files that were being released in order to make Mr. Trump appear guilty by association, including by redacting the name of Virginia Giuffre from one email sent by Epstein mentioning how Mr. Trump had spent time at his home with Giuffre. 

Before her death, Giuffre insisted that Mr. Trump was never inappropriate towards her.