A protester holds a sign related to the release of the Jeffrey Epstein case files outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, Nov. 12, 2025.
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
A petition in the House of Representatives to force a vote to release the so-called Jeffrey Epstein files on Wednesday secured the last signature required to trigger that action.
Rep. Adelita Grilalva, D-Ariz., provided the 218th signature needed to approve the petition shortly after she was sworn in as a House member, after weeks of delay.
The Trump administration has been under fire for months for reneging on promises to release investigative files related to Epstein, a convicted sex offender who killed himself in 2019 after his arrest on child sex trafficking charges.
Epstein had been a friend of President Donald Trump for years before they had a falling out in the early 2000s.
House Democrats earlier Wednesday released more than 20,000 documents obtained from Epstein’s estate under a subpoena.
The documents include emails and text messages in which Epstein talked about Trump.
“I know how dirty donald is,” Epsten wrote in a 2018 email thread for Kathryn Ruemmler, who served as former President Barack Obama’s White House counsel, after she sent Epstein an article about Trump’s ex-personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen’s pleading guilty to campaign finance violations and agreeing to cooperate in a federal investigation of the president.
In a separate April 2019 email released by Democrats, Epstein told author Michael Wolff that Trump “knew about the girls.” It is unclear what the phrase “knew about the girls” meant.
CNBC has not independently verified the documents released by the Democrats.
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