Donald Trump has told his fellow Republicans in Congress to vote for the release of files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, in a sudden reversal of his earlier position.
The US president’s post on his Truth Social website came after the House speaker, Mike Johnson, said previously that he believed a vote on releasing justice department documents in the Epstein case should help put to rest allegations “that he [Trump] has something to do with it”.
Late on Sunday, Trump wrote on his social media platform: “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files because we have nothing to hide.
“And it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party,” he added.
Trump’s surprise reversal on releasing Epstein files
The White House has struggled to contain suspicion within Trump’s usually loyal Make America Great Again (Maga) base that the administration is hiding details of Epstein’s crimes to protect the rich elite with whom the financier associated, including Trump.
Despite continued releases of files by Republicans this year, including a cache of more than 20,000 pages that were published last week, pressure has grown to disclose more information from Epstein’s estate, as well as FBI investigation documents.
The US House of Representatives is expected to vote on the legislation regarding the release of more Epstein files this week, possibly as soon as Tuesday.
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UN security council votes to endorse Trump’s Gaza plan
The resolution, passed by a vote of 13-0 with abstentions by China and Russia, charted “a new course in the Middle East for Israelis and Palestinians and all the people of the region alike”, the US envoy to the UN, Mike Waltz, told the council chamber.
The price of passing a resolution was vague language which left many issues uncertain. It gives overall oversight authority to a “board of peace” chaired by Trump, but of uncertain membership.
US will label supposed Venezuelan drug cartel ‘headed by Maduro’ as terrorist organization
The US has said it will designate a putative Venezuelan drug cartel allegedly led by Nicolás Maduro as a foreign terrorist organization, as the Trump administration sent more mixed messages over its crusade against Venezuela’s authoritarian leader.
The move to target the already proscribed group, the Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns), was announced by Marco Rubio on Sunday.
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US judge finds evidence of ‘government misconduct’ in federal case against Comey
A US judge on Monday found evidence of “government misconduct” in how a prosecutor aligned with Donald Trump secured criminal charges against former FBI director James Comey and ordered that grand jury materials be turned over to Comey’s defense team.
Last week, prosecutors were ordered to produce a trove of materials from the investigation, with the court saying it was concerned that the US justice department’s position on Comey had been to “indict first and investigate later”.
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Trump has ‘blurred’ line between military and politics, ex-officers warn
With months of escalation between US cities and the Trump administration amid the deployment of national guard troops, former military officials released a report on Monday about the risks of politicizing the country’s armed forces.
The report warns that increasing domestic military deployments, such as using national guard troops for immigration enforcement in the US, and removing senior military officers and legal advisers have made the armed forces appear to serve partisan agendas.
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Charlotte, North Carolina, reels as 81 people arrested in immigration raids
Many communities in Charlotte, North Carolina, were reeling after federal Customs and Border Protection teams descended on the city at the weekend and arrested at least 81 people – while normally-thriving immigrant enclaves and business districts came to a standstill. Federal agents were deployed in what the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), calls Operation Charlotte’s Web, sparking protests.
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Trump signals he may soon meet with Zohran Mamdani
The president told reporters that New York City’s mayor-elect “would like to meet with us”, adding, “we’ll work something out” despite trading sharp words for each other previously.
“He would like to come to Washington and meet, and we’ll work something out,” Trump said late on Sunday, referring to Mamdani, the 34-year-old Democratic socialist and former state assemblymember who won the New York City mayoral election earlier this month. “We want to see everything work out well for New York.”
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New international student enrollments in US plunge this year, data shows
The number of international students enrolling in US colleges and universities plunged this year as the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown on higher education began to bite, data released on Monday reveals.
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Supreme court to review Trump policy of limiting asylum claims at border
The US supreme court agreed on Monday to hear a defense by the Trump administration of the government’s authority to limit the processing of asylum claims at ports of entry along the US-Mexico border.
The court took up the administration’s appeal of a lower court’s determination that the “metering” policy, under which US immigration officials could stop asylum seekers at the border and decline to process their claims, violated federal law.
What else happened today:
Catching up? Here’s what happened Sunday 16 November.
