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US President Donald Trump signed a bill ordering the release of all files related to Jeffrey Epstein.
The bill requires the Justice Department to release all information from its investigation into Epstein "in a searchable and downloadable format" within 30 days.
Trump previously opposed releasing the files, but changed his stance last week after facing opposition from Epstein's victims and members of his own Republican Party.
With his support, the legislation passed overwhelmingly in both chambers of Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate, on Tuesday.
In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, the president accused Democrats of supporting the issue to distract from his administration's achievements.
"Maybe the truth about these Democrats and their ties to Jeffrey Epstein will be revealed soon, because I just signed the bill to release the Epstein files!" he wrote.
Although a vote in Congress was not required to release the files, and Trump could have ordered the release himself, lawmakers in the House of Representatives passed the legislation by a vote of 427 to 1. The Senate unanimously agreed to pass it as soon as it arrived, sending the bill to Trump for his signature.
The Epstein files that could be released under the legislation are documents from the criminal investigation into the financier, including transcripts of interviews with victims and witnesses, and items seized in raids on his properties. The materials include internal Justice Department communications, flight logs and people and entities associated with Epstein.
The files are different from the more than 20,000 pages of documents from Epstein's estate released by Congress last week, including some that directly mention Trump.
They include 2018 messages from Epstein in which he said of Trump: "I'm the one who can take him down" and "I know how dirty Donald is."
Trump was friends with Epstein for years, but the president has said they fell out in the early 2000s, two years before Epstein was first arrested. Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.
Speaking to reporters on Monday evening, Trump said Republicans had "nothing to do with Epstein."
"It's really a Democratic problem," he said. "The Democrats were Epstein's friends, all of them."
Epstein was found dead in his New York jail cell in 2019, in what a coroner ruled a suicide. He was being held on sex trafficking charges. He had previously been convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2008.
The once-successful financier had connections to a number of high-profile figures, including Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, the brother of King Charles and former prince; Trump; former Trump adviser Steve Bannon; and a cast of other figures from the worlds of media, politics and entertainment.
On Wednesday, former Harvard President Larry Summers took a leave of absence from teaching at the university while the school investigated his ties to Epstein, revealed in a series of friendly email exchanges.
Attorney General Pam Bondi is required to release “all unclassified records, documents, communications and investigative materials” related to Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell no later than 30 days after the law’s passage. Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking.
But based on the text of the law, certain parts can be kept undisclosed if they are considered to violate personal privacy or are related to an active investigation.
The bill gives Bond the power to keep secret information that would jeopardize any active federal investigation or identify any victim.
One of the architects of the bill, Republican Congressman Thomas Massie, said he had concerns about keeping some files secret.
"I'm concerned that Trump is opening a bunch of investigations and I believe they may be trying to use these investigations as a pretext for not releasing the files. That's my concern," he said. /Adapted from BBC/
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