The House of Representatives passed a bill Tuesday instructing the Department of Justice to release additional files from its investigation into disgraced financier and convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, although unlikely to result in any additional criminals being brought to justice, is a political victory for Democrats, who found religion this year on Epstein after four years of remaining mostly silent on the matter during Joe Biden’s presidency.

As recently as Tuesday, new revelations showed the extent that Democrats disregarded Epstein’s crimes when it benefited them politically.

Rep. James Comer (R-KY), Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, revealed Tuesday that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) solicited meetings and campaign donations from Epstein after his conviction for sex crimes. The Washington Free Beacon reported that Reid Hoffman, a close Jeffrey Epstein associate who admitted to visiting “Epstein Island” where the majority of Epstein’s sex crimes took place, and led efforts to rehabilitate Epstein’s image after his convictions, recently gave $7,000 in political donations to Rep. Ro Khanna, the lead Democrat cosponsor of the bill.

Delegate Stacey Plaskins (D-VI), who represents the Virgin Islands region which includes Epstein’s notorious island, texted with and received advice from Epstein during an Oversight Committee hearing in 2019 during which Plaskett questioned Trump’s former attorney, reports revealed Monday. Harvard Professor Larry Summers, who also served as Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton, announced Monday he is stepping away from public life after emails recently made public revealed a long-term relationship with Epstein that continued after Epstein’s convictions.

But Democrats nonetheless saw the issue as a vehicle to distract from President Donald Trump’s record and tie him to Epstein. Trump had a public friendship with Epstein that ended before Epstein’s convictions, at or about the time when Trump banned Epstein from visiting his properties — making Trump one of the first celebrities to publicly break from Epstein and undermining Democrats’ claims that Epstein possessed blackmail over the future president.

The bill must clear the Senate before making it to Trump’s desk and becoming law. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has not confirmed whether he will bring the bill to the floor, where it could possibly be amended and sent back to the House where it would once again require a vote.

Trump, who insists he has nothing to hide despite Democrats highlighting his past correspondences with Epstein, indicated he will sign the bill after opposing the effort for months.

But despite framing by the bill’s proponents, the legislation is unlikely to yield any new information beyond that which the Trump administration has already endeavored to release.

In short, the bill is unlikely to please anyone — which is by design for Democrats who want the festering issue to eat away at Trump’s support.

The bill’s journey, while not yet complete, has been a long and rocky one.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) kept the House out of Washington for almost two months after passing a short-term spending bill in September to avert a shutdown. At the time the House recessed, Democrats had been exploiting parliamentary procedure to force the Epstein bill onto unrelated legislation.

While the House was not in session, newly-elected Democrat Rep. Adelina Grijalva (NM) was not sworn in. When the chamber reconvened in November to pass a Senate-amended spending bill, Grijalva was sworn in. Her first action was signing a discharge petition to force the Epstein bill to the floor over Johnson’s objections, becoming the 218th and final signature needed.

Republican Reps. Thomas Massie (KY), Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA), Lauren Boebert (CO), and Nancy Mace (SC) had joined with Democrats to sign the Democrats’ discharge petition, drawing Trump’s ire.

But once the bill was jarred loose by the discharge petition, all Republicans but one, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), voted to pass it.

Higgins highlighted just a few of the many concerns with the unorthodox legislation.

“What was wrong with the bill three months ago is still wrong today,” Higgins said in a statement after the vote. “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.”

The bill specifically reads that “no record shall be withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity,” and lacks safeguards to protect those whose names might be referenced in the government’s extensive files despite no evidence or suspicion of wrongdoing.

Higgins pointed to ongoing work done by Republicans to bring to light more of the government’s files on Epstein.

“The Oversight Committee is conducting a thorough investigation that has already released well over 60,000 pages of documents from the Epstein case,” he continued. “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.”

For now, Democrats are gloating at their political victory, however inconsequential it might prove in delivering much-deserved justice to Epstein’s still-at-large coconspirators. But in time, the dozens of buoyant surviving Epstein victims who mistakenly see the bill’s passage as evidence of Democrats’ sudden devotion to delivering justice are likely to feel victimized yet again. That will be another in a long line of tragedies in the decades-long Epstein saga that appears to have no end in sight.

Bradley Jaye is Deputy Political Editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter and Instagram @BradleyAJaye.