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‘Release the damn files’: Outgoing GOP senator slams Trump over Epstein [1]
['Daily Kos Staff']
Date: 2025-07-23
GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is no longer facing reelection, is standing strong in his conviction that the Trump administration should release the long-promised Epstein files.
“Release the damn files,” he told Axios' Stef Kight on Wednesday. “One of two things is true … the promise to release the files during the campaign was either overplayed and we got a nothing burger—if the files get released—or it’s something really disturbing, and that's actually even a more compelling reason to release it.”
President Donald Trump with Jeffrey Epstein, who was charged with sex trafficking in 2019.
Tillis also called the administration’s excuses "nonsense," noting that sensitive materials are routinely released with redactions.
“That's sort of a fake—or a bad—reason for trying to stop something that you don't want to happen,” he said, adding a warning to fellow Republicans who are seeking reelection not to underestimate the staying power of this scandal.
“If anybody thinks that this is going to go away because the House left a day earlier or something, that's going to be like those zombies in ‘The Walking Dead,’” Tillis said. “Every time you think you've killed it, another one's just going to come running out of the closet after you. This is going to be an issue all the way through next year's election.”
Democrats have justifiably seized on Trump and other GOP lawmakers’ disturbing refusal to release the Epstein files, and Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow has successfully incorporated it into her campaign for fellow Democratic Sen. Gary Peters’ seat.
Tillis has been willing to take—mostly toothless—shots at the Trump administration on his way out the door. But at this point, any meaningful criticism of President Donald Trump from the right has some worth.
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