Trump makes U-turn on Epstein files, urges Republicans to release documents

US President Donald Trump on Sunday made a sharp reversal and urged Republicans to vote in favour of releasing the Epstein Files, insisting he has “nothing to hide” and declaring it is “time to move on.”

“House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

The 79-year-old president has recently accused Democrats of manufacturing an “Epstein hoax” after emails surfaced in which disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein suggested Trump “knew about the girls.”

“It’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics…,” Trump said, adding that the Department of Justice has already made “tens of thousands of pages” public. He said the House Oversight Committee could access “whatever they are legally entitled to.”

Trump claimed Democrats were using the issue to distract from what he described as Republican successes on the economy, inflation, tax cuts, border security and other policies. He also accused them of delaying the files’ release and suggested some Republicans were being “used,” an apparent reference to his public feud with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Trump also asserted that “nobody cared about Epstein when he was alive.”

‘Bubbagate’ goes viral

The latest batch of Epstein-related documents going viral includes a 2018 email exchange between Epstein’s brother, Mark Epstein, and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. In the email, Mark speculates whether Russian President Vladimir Putin possesses a compromising photograph of “Trump blowing Bubba.”

The emails do not clarify who “Bubba” refers to, but social media users have linked the nickname to former president Bill Clinton, who has long been associated with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Clinton has denied any wrongdoing, though his name has appeared in flight logs, island visits and survivor testimonies.