President Donald Trump issued Jeffrey Epstein’s controversy on Wednesday as “irrelevant” in the middle of an effort in Capitol Hill to force a vote to release all the archives related to the deceased sexual offender.
“This is a Democratic hoax that never ends,” Trump told journalists in the Oval office when asked about the impulse for more transparency in Epstein’s matter.
“From what I understand, I could verify, but from what I understand, thousands of documents have been given,” said the president. “But it is really a Democratic hoax because they are trying to make people speak about something that is totally irrelevant to the success we have had as a nation since I have been president.”
The comments occurred when a group of survivors joined the members of the House of Representatives in an impulse to force the Department of Justice to publish until now retained records of the Congress.
The ABC News Capitol Hill correspondent Jay O’Brien asked the victims to reaction to the Trump characterization that is a “deception.”
President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Polish President Karol Nawrocki at the Oval Office of the White House, on September 3, 2025, in Washington.
EVAN VUCCI/AP
A survivor, Haley Robson, said he felt like “being detention from inside out.”
“Lord President Donald J. Trump, I am a registered Republican, is not that this is important because this is not political, however, I cordially invite you to find myself in the Capitol in person so that I can understand that this is not a hoax. We are real human beings. This is a real trauma,” she replied.
The republican effort of the representative representative Thomas Massie and the effort of Democratic representative Rost Khanna to force a vote in the archives have led to a confrontation with the republican leadership of the House of Representatives and the White House.
Massie’s high request had 206 signatures until Wednesday afternoon. You need 218 to force vote on the camera floor.
Until now, four Republicans have signed the high request of Massie and Khanna, a procedure tool to avoid leadership of the Republican Party and force a vote. These signatories include Massie, representatives Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Bobert. If the 212 Democrats sign the request, only two more Republicans are needed.
The representative Thomas Massie speaks during a press conference to discuss the draft transparency law of Epstein’s archives in Capitol Hill in Washington, on September 3, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
The speaker Mike Johnson urged Republicans not to support Massie’s high request during a closed conference meeting on Wednesday morning, according to multiple sources. Instead, Johnson argued that the ongoing investigation of the Chamber’s Supervision Committee is the best way to follow.
The House of Representatives adopted on Wednesday a resolution through a vote of 212-208-1 that instructs the Supervision Committee to continue its Epstein investigation that began weeks ago.
The measure was Johnson’s favorite vote on Epstein’s controversy. Massie has called it a “placebo.”
Johnson said he spoke with Trump about Epstein’s archives on Tuesday night, and Trump told him to “take it out” and “put everything out there.”
“This will be a continuous effort. It will be bipartisan, which is excellent and the effort of the Supervision Committee, it is really important to point out, it goes beyond the high request,” Johnson argued. “It means more information than the download even covers. For example, Epstein Estate’s documents, which is a treasure of information that is not referred to in the discharge. And it has the strength of the law because we have citation authorities.”
Johnson said Massie’s high request is “irrelevant and unnecessary.” The speaker said he believed that the supervision panel “will discover things that had never been discovered before.”
The president of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, speaks to the media after meeting with the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, in the United States Capitol, Washington, on September 2, 2025.
Somodevilla/Getty chip
When ABC News asked him about Epstein’s survivors who said Wednesday who are not feeling enough, Johnson said he believed they were being “deceived” by Republican members that Johnson accused of “politicizing” the issue of Epstein.
“I think they have been deceived, and I hope to meet them as soon as possible, because I will share with them what I shared with the ladies who were here yesterday. We are 100% focused on this. We will follow the truth wherever it leads it, and we will do it as quickly as possible,” said Johnson.
The House Supervision Committee published tens of thousands of pages related to Epstein on Tuesday night, but much of the information published was now publicly available.
“Less than 1% of these files have been published,” Khanna said at Wednesday’s press conference. “We are demanding today, in the high request, that all files will be launched.”
The representative James Eat, R-Ky., President of the Chamber’s Supervision Committee, joined ABC News Live on Wednesday, saying that his committee is determined to make the records public and hold those who enable Epstein and Maxwell for decades.
“It is my goal that we have the truth to the American people, to be published each document,” he said.
Epstein was arrested in July 2019 and accused in a federal accusation of child sexual conspiracy and trafficking. He died in custody a month later, while waiting for the trial. His death was governed a suicide hanging.
