Senate majority leader, John Thune, and others push the attorney general to release Epstein records within 30 days

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Within hours of Donald Trump signing the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law, Republican senators were on the ground to issue a pointed message to the US attorney general, Pam Bondi: don’t bury these documents.

The bill’s passage marked a rare moment of bipartisan support in an otherwise ideologically fractured Congress as it now sets a 30-day deadline for the release of Department of Justice files related to the actions of convicted sex offender of minors and financier Jeffrey Epstein, dubbed by a judge “the most infamous pedophile in American history”.

It also marked a rare defeat for Trump, whose own contacts with Epstein have been the subject of intense speculation, along with many other powerful figures who associated with the sex trafficker who killed himself in 2019. Trump had originally been against the passage of the bill, before switching in the face of a rebellion in his own party.