Day: November 16, 2025

In a major reversal, President Donald Trump has signalled to House Republicans that they can vote for the release of the so-called “Epstein files,” as an upcoming vote that threatened to force GOP lawmakers to choose between their leader and their base seems all but certain to pass anyway.

After urging Republicans last week to prevent a House vote to release all of the Epstein files, Trump posted on Truth Social on Sunday night that “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide.”

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Still, Trump maintained that the focus on Jeffrey Epstein, the late well-connected financier and convicted sex offender who died by suicide in federal prison in 2019 during an investigation into alleged sex trafficking, is a distraction ginned up by Trump’s rivals, despite many of his allies having for years fomented conspiracies that Epstein’s death and the lack of public information about his associates were part of a cover-up by prominent Democratic associates.

“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,” Trump added in his post. “The House Oversight Committee can have whatever they are legally entitled to, I DON’T CARE! All I do care about is that Republicans get BACK ON POINT, which is the Economy, “Affordability” (where we are winning BIG!)”

Lawmakers are preparing to vote on a bill that would force the Justice Department to fully release all documents and communications related to Epstein’s sex trafficking investigation and death. The bill has overwhelming support from Democrats, and Rep. Thomas Massie (R, Ky.), who introduced a discharge petition in July alongside Rep. Ro Khanna (D, Calif.) to force the vote despite Republican leadership’s opposition, said he expected a “deluge of Republicans” to also break with their party and vote for the files’ release.

The discharge petition was stalled during the government shutdown when Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D, Ariz.)’s swearing-in was delayed by Speaker Mike Johnson (R, La.), a move Democrats claimed was to block the petition effort. Grijalva became the 218th member to sign the petition, meeting the threshold to force a vote, immediately after taking the oath of office last week when Johnson called the House back to session to pass the funding bill to end the government shutdown.

The Epstein files disclosure vote is expected on Tuesday and comes after the House Oversight Committee last week made public more than 20,000 files, including several email exchanges that mention Trump. In one email from 2019, Epstein wrote that Trump “knew about the girls.” Trump’s friendship with Epstein was already known, and he appears to have been mentioned in records released by the DOJ earlier this year.

The White House, which maintains that Trump has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, said Democrats “selectively leaked emails” to “smear President Donald Trump.”

The names of victims were redacted from the files released last week, although the White House said that one of them was the late Virginia Giuffre, who accused Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who was recently stripped of his British royal title of prince over his connection to Epstein, of sexually abusing her. Giuffre, who previously worked at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago and was among the most prominent of Epstein’s victims, died by suicide in April. She previously told authorities that Trump was a “good friend” of Epstein’s but that to her knowledge he had never partaken in “any sex with any” of Epstein’s victims.

Speaker Johnson also said on Sunday that Republicans and Trump have “nothing to hide.”

“We’ll just get this done and move it on,” he said on Fox News.

Whether Trump’s supporters in the House take the President’s latest message as permission, however, is yet to be seen. Trump also warned in his post about Epstein that “Some ‘members’ of the Republican Party are being ‘used,’ and we can’t let that happen.”

The release of the Epstein files has been a divisive issue among Republicans and Trump’s MAGA base. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R, Ga.) was one of three Republicans besides Massie to sign the discharge petition amid Trump’s calls for Republicans to block the mainly Democratic effort to release the files.

The President withdrew his “support and endorsement” of Greene on Friday, calling her a “traitor.” The public fallout between Trump and Greene, a longtime ally of the President, has led to threats on Greene’s life, she said.

Last week, Trump made several posts that appeared aimed at keeping Republicans in line and accused Democrats of pushing an “Epstein Hoax.” 

“Some Weak Republicans have fallen into their clutches because they are soft and foolish,” he wrote on Friday. “Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap,” he wrote in another post. “This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats,” he posted on Friday.

The President also said he had instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Epstein’s association with several prominent Democrats, despite the Justice Department announcing in July that the case was effectively closed and no further uncharged third parties would be investigated.

“Let’s,” Trump added in his Sunday night post, “not fall into the Epstein ‘TRAP,’ which is actually a curse on the Democrats, not us.”

• A Ukrainian brigade said it used ground robots to spot Russian troops amid heavy fog.
• Dense fog has often been a problem for drone operators, and Russia used it to advance in Pokrovsk.
• But the 93rd Separate Rifle Brigade said on Saturday that it managed to use UGVs to beat the problem.

A Ukrainian brigade said it fought through thick fog hindering its small drones on the eastern frontline by using ground robots to spot Russian troops.

The 93rd Separate Rifle Brigade said on Saturday that it had used the uncrewed ground vehicles, or UGVs, in the village of Rusin Yar, located near the city of Pokrovsk.

The Kremlin has sought to encircle the city as dense fog descended on the region for days, limiting the visibility of reconnaissance and strike drones that Ukraine has typically relied on for defense.

“Taking advantage of weather conditions, namely thick fog, the adversary made a turn toward Ukrainian positions, hoping that our drones would be ‘blind,'” the brigade wrote on its social media channels.

“The Russians failed to account for one thing: state-of-the-art ground robotic reconnaissance systems, which during the enemy’s assault operations were located in their rear,” it added.

The 93rd said the UGVs detected Russian columns in the region, allowing its drone teams to deploy first-person-view drones to dispatch the advancing troops.

The brigade uploaded a video of what it said was the moment when a UGV spotted a Russian armored vehicle, as well as over a dozen clips of FPV drones flying into vehicles and dropping grenades on individual soldiers.

Business Insider could not independently verify when or where the clips were filmed.

The 93rd’s claim, however, could indicate how UGVs might work in tandem with FPV drones in challenging conditions for the latter. These ground vehicles come in many shapes and sizes and are often deployed to perform tasks that infantry might otherwise have to undertake.

The poor visibility from heavy fog has long been a major concern for pilots flying drones in combat, with Ukrainian troops regularly telling Business Insider that no reliable solution for bad weather has been found yet.

“Fog is fog,” said a drone pilot with the Flying Skulls battalion on Wednesday. Their identity is known to Business Insider.

Drone pilots and makers have often advocated for consistent artillery fire to prevent Russia from advancing, regardless of the weather conditions.

Russia has, in recent days, used the cover of heavy fog to press deeper into Pokrovsk, with Ukrainian units reporting a surge in troops attempting to push through.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that his troops there are likely outnumbered eight to one. On Tuesday, he warned that Russia has markedly ramped up the intensity of assaults in the key city, which serves as a transport hub for the region.

“The situation there is difficult, and in particular due to weather conditions that favor attacks,” he wrote in a statement on Telegram.

The war has lately seen Russia relying more heavily on small infiltration teams of two to three soldiers, who travel in smaller numbers hoping to avoid detection and gain a foothold in Ukrainian territory, gradually allowing Moscow to grow its fighting presence in the region.

But the fog’s cover has allowed the Kremlin’s troops to rush toward Pokrovsk in mechanized assaults. A recent viral clip showed soldiers riding on civilian cars, motorbikes, and trucks on a main road in the city’s south.

Still, Ukrainian troops told media outlets this weekend that their Russian counterparts had apparently reverted to their usual tactic of smaller fireteams.

“Last week, we had more mechanized assaults,” a spokesperson for the 117th Separate Heavy Mechanized Brigade told local outlet Suspilne. “Now, the situation has stabilized a little. They continue to move in twos and threes, their so-called total infiltration.”

CNN reported on Sunday that two drone pilots in the region also found that Russian troops in the region were being found in groups of two to three, as opposed to five to seven in the week before.