Epstein affair | Senate approves publication of investigation documents

(Washington) The US Senate on Tuesday unanimously approved a bill aimed at forcing authorities to make public the files in their possession on the case of sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, a few hours after its adoption in the House of Representatives.

The senators used a special procedure so that the text is automatically considered adopted, without debate and without amendments, once it is received from the House. The bill will then be sent to Donald Trump’s desk for promulgation, the American president having affirmed that he would sign this text.

For months, Donald Trump had led a real campaign to thwart the holding of the vote in the House of Representatives, with potentially embarrassing consequences for the president.

The Republican billionaire reiterated Tuesday that he had “nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein,” assuring that he had fired the financier from Mar-a-Lago, his luxury club in Florida, because he was “a sick pervert.”

Figures of the New York jet set, the two businessmen were close from the end of the 1980s until their falling out in the early 2000s, and before proceedings were launched a few years later against the financier, accused of having organized a network of sexual exploitation of underage girls.

“Predators”

Faced with outcry and growing defections in his camp before the vote in the House of Representatives, Donald Trump finally turned around on Sunday and gave his support to the text.

“We have nothing to hide,” said the president, who once again rebelled against what he considers to be a “hoax” set up by the democratic opposition.

The American president did not, however, explain why he did not order his Secretary of Justice to publish these documents directly, without going through a vote in Congress.

During a press conference in front of the Capitol, ahead of the vote expected in the afternoon, several victims of Jeffrey Epstein spoke, often with emotion, to call on Congress to adopt the text.

“The state must never side with predators,” said one of them, Lara Blume McGee, who said she spoke for the first time in public about how Jeffrey Epstein had sexually assaulted her when she was beginning her career as a model in New York.

After the vote in the House, the leader of the Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer, called on the upper house to “act without delay and approve without amendment” the text in order to send it as soon as possible to Donald Trump’s desk for promulgation.

Investigations

After promising his supporters during his campaign shattering revelations, Donald Trump has done everything to extinguish the controversy since his return to power, provoking anger even in his “MAGA” movement.

The affair was further relaunched last week by the publication of emails from the New York financier, with a particularly full address book.

In messages revealed by Democratic parliamentarians, Jeffrey Epstein claims that Donald Trump “knew about the girls” who had been sexually assaulted and that he had even “spent several hours” with one of them.

But the American president, who has never been prosecuted by the courts in this matter, assured that he knew nothing of this. He also counterattacked by calling for an investigation into the relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and certain Democratic figures, including Bill Clinton.

Republican elected official Marjorie Taylor Greene, to whom Donald Trump publicly withdrew her support over the weekend due in particular to her support for the bill, expressed her skepticism on Tuesday, alongside victims of Jeffrey Epstein, in the face of these investigations.

Because while these are in progress, certain documents could legally not be published.

According to Marjorie Taylor Greene, after Congress, “the real test will be: will the Justice Department release the documents?” Or will they remain tied down by these investigations? »