US President Donald Trump has made an abrupt U-turn on the Epstein files, saying House Republicans should vote to release all documents related to the convicted sex offender to move on from the “Democrat hoax”.

“House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social late on Sunday (local time) shortly after landing in Washington following a weekend in Florida.

“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, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown’.”

In the lengthy post, Trump said all he cared about was getting Republicans “back on point”, adding:

“Nobody cared about Jeffrey Epstein when he was alive and, if the Democrats had anything, they would have released it before our Landslide Election Victory.”

Democrats and some Republicans have been pushing a measure that would force the Justice Department to make public more documents from the case on the sex trafficking investigation into Epstein, who committed suicide in jail in 2019.

The US Congress will vote this week on the matter, with Trump’s latest U-turn seen as an implicit acknowledgement that supporters have enough votes to pass the House. However, it has an unclear future in the Senate.

The Washington Post reported that before Trump’s post, Republican representative Thomas Massie, one of the two members who introduced the petition, suggested that “100 or more” House Republicans could vote in favour of releasing the Epstein files.

Many of Trump’s most loyal supporters believe the government is withholding sensitive documents about Epstein.

Trump late on Friday withdrew his support for US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, long one of his staunchest supporters in Congress, following her criticism of Republicans on certain issues, including the handling of the Epstein files.

He lashed out against Greene on social media, labelling her a “traitor”. When she complained that his attacks had unleashed a surge of threats against her, Trump repeated the insults, telling reporters: “I don’t think her life is in danger… I don’t think anyone cares about her.”

Donald Trump is mentioned in Jeffrey Epstein’s emails.

Trump and Epstein were friends during the 1990s and the 2000s, but the President says he broke off ties before Epstein’s 2008 conviction. Nonetheless, the steady release of documents highlighting the relationship has proven to be a headache during his second term in office.

Trump is mentioned in three private emails that were among a batch of 23,000 pages of documents from the Epstein estate released by US House Democrats last Thursday (AEDT). In one 2019 email, Epstein wrote that Trump “knew about the girls”, although it was not clear what that phrase meant.

In another email from Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell in 2011, he wrote that Trump had spent hours at his house with a known Epstein victim.

On Friday, Trump sought to turn attention elsewhere by asking the Department of Justice to investigate Epstein’s alleged ties with JPMorgan and several prominent Democratic figures, including former president Bill Clinton.

“Epstein was a Democrat, and he is the Democrat’s problem, not the Republican’s problem!” he wrote on social media.

“They all know about him, don’t waste your time with Trump. I have a Country to run!”

No credible evidence has surfaced that Trump or any of people named by him were involved in Epstein’s sex trafficking. All have previously denied wrongdoing.

Trump has previously expressed sympathy for the British royal family after the release of details about former prince Andrew’s ties with Epstein led to him being stripped of his titles.

–with Reuters