According to this law, the department must provide all information from the investigation within 30 days, and the data must be available in a format that allows for searching and downloading.
Trump had previously opposed the publication of these materials but changed his mind last week under pressure from Epstein's victims and some members of his own Republican Party.
As a result, the bill was successfully passed by both chambers of Congress, receiving a significant majority of votes, and was approved by the Senate this Tuesday. The Senate unanimously approved it and sent it to Trump for his signature.
On his platform Truth Social on Wednesday, Trump accused the Democrats of raising this issue to distract from the successes of his administration.
"The truth about the Democrats and their connections to Jeffrey Epstein may soon be revealed, as I JUST SIGNED THE EPSTEIN FILES DISCLOSURE ACT!" - he noted.Although Trump could have ordered the disclosure of the materials himself, the bill was supported in the House of Representatives with a vote of 427 to 1, and the Senate approved it unanimously.
The documents that will be disclosed under the new law include materials from criminal investigations, transcripts of victim and witness interrogations, as well as items seized during searches. Additionally, the list includes internal communications from the Justice Department, flight data, and information about individuals and organizations connected to Epstein.
These materials differ from the more than 20,000 pages of documents released by Congress last week from Epstein's archive, which also contain mentions of Trump.
These materials include Epstein's 2018 messages, in which he claims: "I am the one who can destroy him" and "I know how dirty Donald is."
Trump was friends with Epstein for many years but claims their relationship soured in the early 2000s, two years before Epstein's first arrest. The president has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.
In an interview with reporters on Monday, Trump stated that Republicans "have nothing to do with Epstein."
"This is actually a problem for the Democrats," he noted. "They were all friends of Epstein."
Epstein was found dead in his prison cell in New York in 2019, and his death was ruled a suicide. He was in custody on charges of sex trafficking and had previously been convicted in 2008 for soliciting minors for prostitution.
This influential financier had connections with many prominent figures, including Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the brother of King Charles III, as well as Trump, his former advisor Steve Bannon, and many others from media, politics, and show business.
On Wednesday, Larry Summers, former president of Harvard, temporarily suspended his teaching at the university due to an investigation into his connections with Epstein, revealed during email exchanges.
According to the law, Attorney General Pam Bondi is required to disclose "all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials" related to Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell within 30 days of the law's enactment. Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.
However, as stated in the text of the law, some materials may be withheld if their publication threatens privacy or pertains to ongoing investigations.
The law grants Bondi the authority to withhold information that could harm active federal investigations or reveal the identities of victims.
One of the bill's authors, Republican Congressman Thomas Massie, expressed concerns about the potential withholding of some files.
"I am worried that [Trump] may initiate a wave of investigations, and I believe this could be a pretext for denying the publication of the files," he stated.
