NPR/PBS poll finds just 20% of Americans approve of Trump's handling of Epstein matter

Update November 18, 2025: The House of Representatives voted to release the Epstein files by a 427 to 1 margin.  It now goes to the Senate. The measure passed overwhelming after Pres. Trump withdrew his opposition once enough members had pledged support to assure passage.

By Alexander J. Schorr

Image: Best Friends Forever sculpture of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein

November 17, 2025 -- In a surprise reversal, President Trump announced approval of the upcoming Congressional vote to release Justice Department documents and data related to convicted sex offender Jeffery Epstein. “We’ll give them everything,” said Trump, who said he would sign a bill to release the “complete” stock of Epstein files if it ends up on his desk.

Trump has been avoiding the press about newly released emails connecting him to Epstein’s criminal sex trafficking of young girls. Trump’s name appeared at least 1,500 times in documents from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein made public last week in the US Congress, according to CBS News.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released three emails referencing Trump, including one Epstein wrote in 2011 in which he told his confidant Ghislaine Maxwell that Trump had “spent hours” at Epstein’s house with one of Epstein’s trafficking victims. Documents indicate that Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell discussed Trump frequently in newly released emails between 2011 and 2019.

“Of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop,” Epstein wrote in an email to author Michael Wolff on Jan. 31, 2019, the Miami Herald reports. If Trump had knowledge of Epstein's abuse and trafficking of under-age girls, however, he apparently never reported it to law enforcement.