Releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files is about holding all guilty, powerful men accountable for their roles in the sex-trafficking ring, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said on Sunday.

Khanna is on the House Oversight Committee, which released troves of emails from Epstein last week. Epstein, a convicted sex offender, died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. In one email, Epstein wrote that President Donald Trump, a former friend, “knew about the girls,” and in another, he suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin may have images of Trump “blowing” a person named Bubba.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that the emails were “selectively leaked” to “create a fake narrative to smear President Trump.”

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump also pushed for the release of the Epstein files. However, since returning to office, he has described the calls for the files to be released as “a Democrat hoax that never ends.” More recently, Trump has claimed that Democrats leaked the emails to distract from the government shutdown, which was the longest in history.

“Republicans are saying that Democrats are just cherry-picking these documents,” NBC News’ Kristen Welker said to Khanna on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Are Democrats trying to score political points against the president in this fight? Is that a part of it?”

Khanna denied it and said he hoped that Trump would meet with some of the Epstein survivors when they visited Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.

“If you gave me a choice, I’d rather the president reverse course. I’d rather he release all these files. Someone was saying that his numbers would go up. I don’t care if he gets the political win,” Khanna said. “There is a group of rich and powerful men who abused young girls. It’s the one thing this country agrees was horrible. I don’t think we’ve had a scandal like this in this country, and what we’re asking for is justice for those survivors. So, it’s not about Donald Trump. I don’t even know how involved Trump was.”

In July, Khanna and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) co-sponsored a bill that calls for the release of all Epstein-related documents. The House is set to consider the Epstein Files Transparency Act as soon as Tuesday.

“Epstein had set up a rape island where rich and powerful men were abusing young girls with impunity. And there are thousands of victims, and rich and powerful men still had buildings named after them, scholarships named after them. This is not partisan. They all need to be held accountable. The Epstein class needs to go,” Khanna said.

In a startling reversal, Trump posted to Truth Social on Sunday night that House Republicans should vote to release the files.

“We have nothing to hide,” he wrote.