WASHINGTON (TNND) — The U.S. Senate unanimously agreed to pass the House-backed bill forcing the Justice Department to release its Epstein case files, as soon as it’s received from the chamber on Tuesday evening. As the vote was unanimous, the Senate will not need to take any further action.

The bill will be sent back to the president’s desk as soon as it arrives in the Senate, although it is not clear when the legislation will be received in the Senate.

Generally, it can take a bit of time — sometimes a few hours — to move legislation from one chamber to another. House Speaker Mike Johnson, if he chooses to, could slow sending the legislation up to the first week of December.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on Johnson to send the bill to President Trump as soon as possible, telling reporters after the vote, “Johnson should send the bill over, now. Right now, there’s no reason it can’t be on the president’s desk in an hour.”

Schumer requested that the bill be passed on the Senate floor. As no senator objected, it was passed without the Senate needing to take a roll call vote.

“The Senate has now passed the Epstein bill — as soon as it comes over from the House,” Schumer announced.

President Trump has previously said he would sign the bill if it reached his desk.

Before the Senate took the vote, Trump posted to Truth Social writing, “I don’t care when the Senate passes the House Bill, whether tonight, or at some other time in the near future, I just don’t want Republicans to take their eyes off all of the Victories that we’ve had.”

In a near unanimous 427-1 vote, the House has approved a bill to release the Department of Justice’s files on Jeffrey Epstein on Tuesday.

House Speaker Mike Johnson voted in favor of the bill, telling reporters at a press conference earlier Tuesday, “I’m gonna vote to move this forward,” but called the bill “recklessly flawed.” (TNND)

Rep. Clay Higgins, R-LA, was the only Republican to vote no. Five representatives did not vote.

In a statement on X, Higgins said that he voted no because he thinks the release of all the files “will absolutely result in innocent people being hurt.”

“I have been a principled “NO” on this bill from the beginning. What was wrong with the bill three months ago is still wrong today. It abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America. As written, this bill reveals and injures thousands of innocent people – witnesses, people who provided alibis, family members, etc. If enacted in its current form, this type of broad reveal of criminal investigative files, released to a rabid media, will absolutely result in innocent people being hurt. Not by my vote. The Oversight Committee is conducting a thorough investigation that has already released well over 60,000 pages of documents from the Epstein case. That effort will continue in a manner that provides all due protections for innocent Americans. If the Senate amends the bill to properly address privacy of victims and other Americans, who are named but not criminally implicated, then I will vote for that bill when it comes back to the House.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson voted in favor of the bill, telling reporters at a press conference earlier Tuesday, “I’m gonna vote to move this forward,” but called the bill “recklessly flawed.”

“I think it could be close to a unanimous vote because everybody here, all the Republicans, want to go on record to show for maximum transparency. But they also want to know that we’re demanding that this stuff get corrected before it has ever moved through the process and is complete,” Johnson said.

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., have been fighting to release the files, with a majority of the House signing a discharge petition last week, allowing the House to force a vote without leadership or committee approval.

Rep. Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz., the newest member of the House, was the 218th signature that pushed the vote forward. Grijalva had promised to sign the petition amid her delayed swearing in due to the shutdown, with Democrats accusing House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., of delaying the vote.

Johnson has denied these claims, saying that her swearing-in would not take place until the government reopened. He also said he would move the vote forward.

Now, the bill will head to the Senate.

Johnson told reporters that he spoke to Senate Majority Leader Thune in the hopes that the Senate would make amendments to the Epstein files bill.

“I called my counterpart in the Senate, Leader Thune, and I talked him through this with him and shared our deep concerns, and of course, they share those concerns as well. And so I’m very confident that when this moves forward in the process, if and when it is processed in the Senate – which it’s no certainty that that will be – that they will take the time methodically to do what we’ve not been allowed to do in the House, to amend this discharge petition and to make sure that these protections are there.”

Johnson wants the bill to be amended to protect “victims and whistleblowers.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters he expects his chamber to take up the bill and that it would be approved quickly.

“My assumption is that the president sounds like he’s prepared to sign it, so I’d assume we’ll move fairly quickly over here,” Thune told reporters on Tuesday.

Thune also said it was unlikely that the Senate would make the amendments to the bill that Johnson has called for.

“You got a 427 to 1 vote, it’s probably not likely to happen,” Thune said.

Senate Minority Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he will request unanimous consent on the Senate floor to “immediately” pass the bill. Schumer posted a video on Tuesday afternoon, saying that he was headed to the Senate floor to make his request after the House voted yes.

We have an opportunity to get this bill done today and have it, have it on the president’s desk to be signed into law tonight. We should seize that opportunity,” Schumer said Tuesday.

Unanimous consent means that if no senator objects on the floor, it will immediately be considered passed and sent to President Trump’s desk.

When asked about the vote, President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would sign the bill if it reached his desk, saying act he is “all for it.”

“We’ll give them everything. Sure. I would let them, let the Senate look at it. Let anybody look at it,” Trump said. “But don’t talk about it too much, because honestly, I don’t want to take it away from us.”

The bill would force the Department of Justice to release all of the files related to their investigation of Jeffrey Epstein within 30 days. The names of the victims would be redacted.

Earlier on Tuesday, lawmakers and Epstein survivors spoke on Capitol Hill, urging Congress to vote in favor of the bill.

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