President Donald Trump abruptly reversed his opposition to releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files, and CNN's Maria Cardona believes he's only "faking" support for a congressional vote on the matter.

Trump has been unable to turn the page on the long-simmering scandal involving the late sex offender — a longtime friend of his — and House Republicans have refused to bow to his pressure campaign to vote against a procedural motion compelling the Department of Justice to release federal records on his trafficking network.

"The bottom line is that this should be about the survivors," Cardona told "CNN This Morning." "This shouldn't be political. I completely agree with [fellow panelist Garrett Graff] and everyone who's been talking about how we can't lose sight of that. But the problem is, it has become political, not because of Democrats."

"This is not a Democrat hoax," she added. "This has become political because Republicans made it an issue during their campaign. During the 2024 campaign, they ran on it and they said, let's remember, [Attorney General] Pam Bondi said, 'It's on my desk, I'm about to release it right now.'"

Cardona pointed out that Trump, as chief executive, could authorize Bondi to release DOJ files on his disgraced former friend without Congress's intervention, but he hasn't done that and fought against congressional efforts to shake them loose until it became clear the vote would pass.

"The reason why I think that Donald Trump's kind of, you know, faking the fact that he wants this out is because he could put it out now if he wanted to," Cardona said. "Why wait for this vote? That will be incredibly embarrassing to him when massive numbers of Republicans are going to vote for it, when we know that this is not something that he wants out there.

"If he really wanted it out there, he could have done it four months ago, and he could do it right now."

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