By STEPHEN GROVES, Associated Press<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The House is headed toward a vote Tuesday afternoon on legislation to force the Justice Department to publicly release its files on the late financier\u00a0Jeffrey Epstein<\/a>, the culmination of a monthslong effort that has overcome opposition from President\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0and Republican leadership.<\/p>\n When a small bipartisan group of House lawmakers introduced a petition in July to maneuver around House Speaker Mike Johnson\u2019s control of which bills see the House floor, it appeared a longshot effort \u2014 especially as Trump urged his supporters to dismiss the matter as a\u00a0\u201choax.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0But both Trump and Johnson failed in their efforts to prevent the vote.<\/p>\n Now the president has bowed to the growing momentum behind the bill and even said he will sign it if it passes the Senate. His blessing ensures an overwhelming vote to pass the vote in the House, putting further pressure on the Senate to take it up.<\/p>\n Tuesday\u2019s vote could be a pivotal moment for long-held demands that the Justice Department release its case files on Epstein, a well-connected financier who killed himself in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial in 2019 on charges he sexually abused and trafficked underage girls.<\/p>\n \u201cThese women have fought the most horrific fight that no woman should have to fight. And they did it by banding together and never giving up,\u201d said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as she stood with some of the abuse survivors outside the Capitol Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what we did by fighting so hard against the most powerful people in the world, even the president of the United States, in order to make this vote happen today,\u201d added Greene, a Georgia Republican and longtime Trump loyalist.<\/p>\n A separate investigation conducted by the House Oversight Committee has released thousands of\u00a0pages of emails<\/a>\u00a0and other documents from Epstein\u2019s estate, showing his connections to global leaders, Wall Street powerbrokers, influential political figures and Trump himself. In the United Kingdom, King Charles III stripped his disgraced brother Prince Andrew of his remaining titles and evicted him from his royal residence after pressure to act over his relationship with Epstein.<\/p>\n Pushing for more accountability, the survivors of Epstein\u2019s abuse cast the current effort in Congress as a step towards accountability for Epstein\u2019s crimes after years of government failure under multiple presidential administrations.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s reversal on the Epstein files<\/p>\n Trump has said he cut ties with Epstein years ago, but\u00a0tried for months to move past the demands<\/a>\u00a0for disclosure. On Monday, he told reporters that Epstein was connected to more Democrats and that he didn\u2019t want the Epstein files to \u201cdetract from the great success of the Republican Party.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, many in the Republican base have continued to demand the release of the files. Adding to that pressure, several survivors of Epstein\u2019s abuse rallied outside the Capitol Tuesday morning. Bundled in jackets against the November chill and holding photos of themselves as teenagers, they recounted their stories of abuse.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are exhausted from surviving the trauma and then surviving the political conflicts that surround it,\u201d said Jena-Lisa Jones, one of the survivors.<\/p>\n She added that she had voted for Trump, but had a message for the president: \u201cI beg you Donald Trump, please stop making this political.\u201d<\/p>\n The group of women also met with Johnson and\u00a0rallied outside the Capitol in September<\/a>, but have had to wait months for the vote.<\/p>\n