![\"Donald](\"https:\/\/media.cnn.com\/api\/v1\/images\/stellar\/prod\/house-oversight-083563-copy.jpg?c=original&q=w_1280,c_fill\/f_avif\")
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\n Last month, President Donald Trump signed a bill<\/a> directing the Department of Justice to publicly release all its Jeffrey Epstein-related files. The deadline to do so is this Friday.\n <\/p>\n \n It isn\u2019t clear how the Justice Department will release the related files or if the information will remain tied up in ongoing investigations.\n <\/p>\n \n Here\u2019s what you should know:\n <\/p>\n \n What are the Epstein files: The Epstein files are made of over 300 gigabytes<\/a> of data, paper, video, photographs and audio that live within the FBI\u2019s main electronic case management system, \u201cSentinel.\u201d These records would include investigative reports and records from the FBI Miami field division\u2019s original Epstein investigation.\n <\/p>\n \n Why there\u2019s interest in the case: The case has continued to fascinate the public years after Epstein\u2019s death due to his ties to powerful people. Epstein\u2019s death by suicide before trial launched conspiracy theories and deprived many of his accusers a public airing of his conduct. Division between Republican lawmakers<\/a> mounted this year, with some calling for transparency from Trump and the Department of Justice.\n <\/p>\n \n House Oversight Committee: In November, the House Oversight Committee released 20,000 pages of documents<\/a> the GOP-led panel received from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein. He mentioned Trump by name multiple times in emails over the last 15 years<\/a> with an associate and an author in Trump\u2019s orbit. It\u2019s unclear what new information, if any, is stuffed in the boxes of evidence within the Justice Department set to release this week.\n <\/p>\n \n Photos released: Last week, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released photos from Epstein\u2019s estate showing the many powerful figures in the late sex trafficker\u2019s orbit<\/a>, including Trump, former President Bill Clinton, Steve Bannon, Bill Gates, Richard Branson and others. In a statement, a White House spokesperson said House Democrats were \u201cselectively releasing cherry-picked photos with random redactions to try and create a false narrative.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The Epstein legislation: The bill, formally titled the Epstein Files Transparency Act<\/a>, was passed by the House in November by a vote of 427 to 1. The Senate then agreed through unanimous consent to deem the bill passed as soon as it was received from the House. Upon announcing his signing of the bill, Trump framed the release of the files as a transparency effort he pushed through Congress and using the moment to criticize Democrats over their past associations with Epstein.\n <\/p>\n \n What Americans think: A recent Reuters-Ipsos poll<\/a> asked whether Americans believed that Trump was not aware <\/a>of Epstein\u2019s alleged crimes before they became public. Just 18% said it was \u201csomewhat\u201d or \u201cvery\u201d likely that Trump didn\u2019t know. Fully 60% said it was \u201cnot too\u201d or \u201cnot at all\u201d likely that Trump didn\u2019t know. Even among Republicans, slightly more felt Trump was probably aware (39%) than leaned toward him not knowing (34%). Trump, again, has not been accused of wrongdoing in the Epstein case, and has denied involvement.\n <\/p>\n \n CNN\u2019s Samantha Waldenberg, Alejandra Jaramillo, Haven Orecchio-Egresitz, Kara Scannell, Evan Perez, Piper Hudspeth Blackburn, Julia Benbrook, Alayna Treene, Annie Grayer, Kaitlan Collins and Aaron Blake contributed reporting.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last month, President Donald Trump signed a bill directing the Department of Justice to publicly release all its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-348983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}