President Trump says if he would sign bill to release Epstein files

President Donald Trump said, “I’m all for it,” when asked by a reporter if he would sign a bill that would force the Justice Department to release all of its records related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump made the remarks at the White House on Monday as the House of Representatives prepares to vote on the bill Tuesday afternoon.

“We have nothing to do with Epstein. Democrats do. All his friends were Democrats,” Trump said. “All I want is for people to recognize the great work I’ve done on prices, on affordability, because we’ve brought the prices down dramatically, but they keep going lower. On energy, to end eight wars and another one coming very soon, I believe. We’ve done a great job, and I hate to see it distract from the great work that we’ve done. So I’m all for it.”

Asked again if he would sign the bill if it reached his desk, Trump added, “Of course I would.”

HOUSE GOP PREPARES FOR EPSTEIN VOTE FILES AS CONCERNS REMAIN DESPITE TRUMP GREEN LIGHT

President Donald Trump is seen in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, Thursday, November 13, 2025. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“Let the Senate look at it. Let anyone look at it. But don’t talk about it too much, because honestly…it’s really a Democratic issue,” Trump also said. “The Democrats were all friends of Epstein. And it’s a hoax. The whole thing is a hoax, and I don’t want to take that away from the greatness of what the Republican Party has accomplished over the last period.”

Republican lawmakers who spoke to Fox News Digital Monday evening said they would vote for the bill and were optimistic their colleagues would as well — although many of them said they were still concerned about the way it was written.

TRUMP CALLS ON HOUSE REPUBLICANS TO VOTE FOR RELEASE OF EPSTEIN FILES: ‘WE HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE’

Jeffrey Epstein, left, and Donald Trump pose together at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, on February 22, 1997. (Davidoff Studios/Getty Images)

This comes after House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who was against the bill but had pushed parallel transparency efforts in Epstein’s case, said he hoped the bill would undergo significant changes when it reaches the Senate to give more protection to innocent people whose names may appear in records against their will.

The bill will be introduced in the House on Tuesday afternoon via a mechanism called a discharge petition led by Rep. Ro. Khanna, D-Calif., and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky.

In an article published Sunday on Truth Social, Trump urged House Republicans to vote to release the documents.

Trump also argued that if Democrats “had something,” it would have surfaced before last year’s presidential election.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., leaves the chamber to speak with reporters after the final vote to end the longest government shutdown in history, at the Capitol in Washington, DC, Wednesday, November 12, 2025. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)

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“No one cared about Jeffrey Epstein when he was alive, and if the Democrats had anything, they would have released it before our landslide election victory,” Trump said. “Some ‘members’ of the Republican Party are being ‘used,’ and we can’t let that happen. Let’s start by talking about the Republican Party’s record-breaking accomplishments, and not fall into the Epstein ‘TRAP,’ which is actually a curse on Democrats, not us. LET’S MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Elizabeth Elkind and Sophia Compton of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.