"I HAVE JUST SIGNED THE BILL TO RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES!" he said in a Truth Social post, following a lengthy preamble aimed at discrediting the Democrats.

"Democrats have used the 'Epstein' issue, which affects them far more than the Republican Party, in order to try and distract from our AMAZING Victories," he continued.

It comes after the Senate finished the formalities and sent the proposed legislation to the president's desk, having comfortably cleared a vote in the House of Representatives on Tuesday.

The Justice Department now has 30 days to release the documents it holds on the paedophile financier.

How did we get here?

Mr Trump has spent weeks decrying the Epstein files as a Democratic "hoax".

His links to the disgraced financier have long been subject to scrutiny. Mr Trump has always denied any wrongdoing.

His change of heart on releasing the files came as a surprise over the weekend, as he called on Republicans in Congress to vote for the so-called Epstein Files Bill and indicated he'd sign it.

"Because of this request, the votes were almost unanimous in favor of passage," Mr Trump said in his late night post announcing the signing of the bill.

The House of Representatives was indeed near unanimous in voting for the material to be released, with 427 in favour and one against.

Hot on the heels of that vote, which was met with cheers in the chamber, the Senate said it too would pass the bill.

Trump tries to tie Democrats to Epstein

Mr Trump's post repeatedly labels Epstein as a Democrat, citing his past associations with the likes of Bill Clinton.

Mr Trump has said he wants the Justice Department to investigate Epstein's links to Mr Clinton, former treasury secretary Larry Summers, and Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn founder, who is also a prominent Democratic donor.

All three men were mentioned in the 20,000 other Epstein-related documents released by Congress's House Oversight Committee last week. None of them, however, have been accused of wrongdoing in the case.

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Emails, photos and other documents released in recent weeks have included references to Mr Trump, the UK's since sacked US ambassador Lord Mandelson, and former British prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who has faced calls from members of the committee to give evidence.

Like Mr Trump, both Britons have denied any wrongdoing and expressed regret about their relationship with Epstein.

The deadline for Mr Mountbatten-Windsor to respond to an official request from the committee is today.

Unrest in MAGA world

The issue has proved to be a major source of division within Mr Trump's Make America Great Again movement.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a long-time Trump backer who publicly fell out with the president just days ago, stood with Epstein survivors on the steps of the Capitol ahead of Tuesday's Congress votes.

She said: "These women have fought the most horrific fight that no woman should have to fight. And they did it by banding together and never giving up."

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A wild dog is walking through its ruin, while a military drone buzzes above. In the distance, there is the cackle of machine gun fire.

Welcome to Shuja'iyya, in the north of Gaza. Not so long ago, this was a bustling town of around 100,000 people, proud of a history dating back 850 years.

Now, it is a wasteland, a patchwork of dust and misery.

Israel does not allow news organisations to report independently from Gaza. Today, it took a group of journalists, including Sky News, into the area of the Strip occupied by Israeli forces.

The brief visit was highly controlled and offered no access to Palestinians, or other areas of Gaza. Military censorship laws in Israel mean that military personnel were shown all our material before publication.

Sky News maintained editorial control of this report at all times.

The buildings in front of me have all been wrecked by warfare - at best, the sides blown out and a mere skeleton remaining. Many have simply been reduced to rubble.

Over the past two years, more than 68,000 people have been killed in Gaza as a result of Israeli military action. It was a war that started on 7 October 2023, when more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed by Hamas militants in a devastating surprise attack.

Now, an uneasy ceasefire hangs over Gaza, the result of the peace plan drawn up by US President Donald Trump's team and now endorsed by the United Nations.

I am standing on a mound of earth at the edge of an Israeli military camp. The only signs of life around me are the Israeli soldiers behind me, a roster of wild dogs who dart around the area, and a single solitary bird that lands on a rock - a gentle counterpoint to the desolation that surrounds it.

This is the Israeli side of the line that now divides Gaza into two parts. It's known as the Yellow Line, although there is no actual line running through the whole territory.

A series of concrete blocks are gradually being put into place, but they are starting from the edges and working in.

From where I'm standing, I can see a tall red and white mast several hundred metres away. This sits exactly on the Yellow Line, so it is a very visible sign that we are near the division.

Basically, the land I'm standing on is now run by Israel, and is home to a very small number of Gazans. The vast majority of the two million-strong population is on the other side of the Yellow Line, where control is still held by Hamas.

The Israeli military has invited us here. They are in charge of where we go and what we see, and they also have the right to censor the material we broadcast, although we, as journalists, retain complete editorial control over what we write and say.

IDF: Hamas 'haven't changed who they are'

The message they are keen to project is that, despite two years of attacks on Gaza, Hamas has not gone away and is showing no sign of disarming.

And that, they insist, is something that worries all Israelis, and terrifies those who live near the border with Gaza. Some of those towns are very clearly visible through the afternoon haze.

"We're not staying here as a hobby," says Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani, the spokesperson for the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).

"We're staying here to secure the people of Israel. We see it right there," and he points towards a nearby Israeli town.

"It's a two-minute drive to where our civilians live. And we see right here a battlefield where there were tens of thousands of Hamas terrorists.

"They haven't changed who they are. And it's going to need pressure from the international community and maybe also from Israel to make sure they disarm.

"Hamas are rearming, Hamas are killing their opponents on the street. Hamas are trying to reassert dominance, and power, in Gaza."

Under the peace plan endorsed by the UN, a so-called stabilisation force is expected to enter Gaza to protect civilians and ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid.

But we have no details of who those troops will be, when they will arrive, what their legal mandate will be or whether they will be required to disarm Hamas.

For the moment, the Strip is simply split between the half where there is a strictly-enforced peace, but almost no residents, and the half where there are millions of people trying to live amid the chaos of post-war devastation.

International journalists are now allowed into Gaza, but our colleagues have been there since the start of the war.

As I was watching Shuja'iyya from an Israeli army camp, so they were visiting the remains of the town on the other side of the Yellow line.

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'Everything here is destroyed'

What they saw was the same vista of ruin. It is impossible to imagine people living in such a place, but remarkably, some do.

Our team met Iman Hasoneh, 48 years old, and ground down by the pain of life.

Her husband has internal bleeding from a wound, and her children are exhausted. The family fled Shuja'iyyah months ago, then found nowhere else to live, and ended up returning to the rubble of their home.

"Our home collapsed, and it was a miracle we escaped," she says. "We couldn't find anywhere else. Our struggle was immense. We moved around so much.

"There was a rocket attack over there" - she beckons towards another collapsed building down the street - "and the blast knocked us all over.

"I didn't expect to survive. I'm giving up. One day they will just announce that we have all been killed. We are on the edge of the Yellow Line, and there is so much suffering."

Our team asks here about the effect of the peace plan.

"I want to be optimistic, but I'm not sure what is going to happen.

"They are giving us an anaesthetic to numb the pain. But everything here is destroyed. God willing, the Israelis will pull out and leave here."

Above her, the drone is buzzing.

It is the same drone we heard from the camp, launched from near the place where I stand and watch, now hovering over the ruined home where Iman hopes to live another day.

At a news conference in Downing Street on Wednesday, John Healey said the Yantar was on the edge of British waters north of Scotland, having entered wider UK waters over the last few weeks.

He said it was the second time this year the ship had been deployed off the UK coast and he claimed it was "designed for gathering intelligence and mapping our undersea cables".

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Mr Healey said the ship had "directed lasers" at pilots of surveillance aircraft monitoring its activities - a Russian action he called "deeply dangerous".

The defence secretary explained: "We deployed a Royal Navy frigate and RAF planes to monitor and track this vessel's every move, during which the Yantar directed lasers at our pilots."

He said his message to Moscow and President Vladimir Putin was "we see you, we know what you're doing, and if the Yantar travels south this week, we are ready".

Mr Healey also stated the UK government has "military options ready" if the ship sails closer to British shores.

Russia's response

Responding to Mr Healey's comments, the Russian embassy to the UK said on social media it noted his "latest provocative statements" and insisted the ship was an "oceanographic research vessel... in international waters".

The embassy said the British accusations "raise a smile" and Russia's actions were "not aimed at undermining" the UK's security.

It hit out at the UK government's "Russophobic course and the escalation of militaristic hysteria", which it warned creates "prerequisites for new dangerous situations", as it urged London to "refrain from destructive steps".

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The defence secretary's remarks come after a report from MPs warned the UK lacks a plan to defend itself from a military attack, despite the government promising to boost readiness with new arms factories.

At least 13 sites across the UK have been identified for new factories to make munitions and military explosives, with Mr Healey expecting the arms industry to break ground at the first plant next year.

The report, by the Commons Defence Committee, said the UK "lacks a plan for defending the homeland and overseas territories" as it urged the government to launch a "co-ordinated effort to communicate with the public on the level of threat we face".

'Assertive retaliation'

Now the government has been cautioned it may need to be "more muscular" in standing up to Russia.

The chair of the Joint Committee on National Security Strategy, Matt Western, said Wednesday's development "demonstrates once again that Russia presents a genuine and immediate threat to the UK's security".

He added that "the UK needed to be more muscular in tackling Russian aggression" and "there is more we can do".

"More assertive retaliation may be required," he concluded.

Mr Healey acknowledged the dangers facing the UK, saying the country was in a "new era of threat" that "demands a new era for defence".

Giving more details on the vessel, he said it was "part of a Russian fleet designed to put and hold our undersea infrastructure and those of our allies at risk".

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He said the Yantar wasn't just part of a naval operation but part of a Russian programme driven by Moscow's Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research, or GUGI, which is "designed to have capabilities which can undertake surveillance in peacetime and sabotage in conflict".

"That is why we've been determined, whenever the Yantar comes into British wider waters, we track it, we deter it and we say to Putin we are ready, and we do that alongside allies," he added.

Asked by Sky News' political correspondent Rob Powell whether this was the first time that lasers had been used by a Russian vessel against pilots, Mr Healey replied: "This is the first time we've had this action from Yantar directed against the British RAF.

"We take it extremely seriously. I've changed the Navy's rules of engagement so that we can follow more closely, monitor more closely, the activities of the Yantar when it's in our wider waters. We have military options ready."

Mr Healey added that the last time the Yantar was in UK waters, the British military surfaced a nuclear-powered attack submarine close to the ship "that they did not know was there".

In hangars below decks lurk submersibles straight out of the Bond film Thunderball. Two Consul Class mini manned subs are on board and a number of remotely operated ones.

It can "undertake surveillance in peacetime and sabotage in conflict", in the words of Britain's Defence Secretary John Healey.

Cable-cutting equipment combined with surveillance and intelligence gathering capabilities make this a vessel to be reckoned with.

Most worryingly though, in its most recent tangle with RAF planes sent to stalk it, the Yantar deployed a laser to distract and dazzle the British pilot.

Matthew Savill, from the Royal United Services Institute, told Sky News this was potentially a worrying hostile act.

He said: "If this had been used to dazzle the pilot and that aircraft had subsequently crashed, then maybe the case could be made that not only was it hostile but it was fundamentally an armed attack because it had the same impact as if they'd used a weapon."

The Yantar is off our waters and here to threaten the West's Achilles heel, says our government. Undersea infrastructure is essential to our hyper-connected world.

Undersea cables are the vital nervous system of Western civilisation. Through them courses the data that powers our 21st century economies and communications systems.

Pipelines are equally important in supplying fuel and gas that are vital to our prosperity. But they stretch for mile after mile along the seabed, exposed and all but undefended.

Their vulnerability is enough to keep Western economists and security officials awake at night, and Russia is well aware of that strategic weakness.

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That is why some of the most sophisticated kit the Russian military possesses is geared towards mapping and potentially threatening them.

The Yantar's concealed capabilities are currently being used to map that underwater network of cables and pipelines, it's thought, but they could in the future be used to sabotage them. Russia has been blamed for mysterious underwater attacks in the recent past.

A more kinetic conflict striking at the West's soft underwater underbelly could have a disastrous impact. Enough damage to internet cables could play havoc with Western economies.

It is a scenario security experts believe the West is not well enough prepared for.

Putting the Yantar and its Russian overseers on watch is one thing; preventing them from readying for such a doomsday outcome in time of war is quite another.

But as we hit the two-week deadline set by the US Congress committee investigating Jeffrey Epstein for a reply from Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, will he agree to their request to open up about the paedophile financier?

The letter sent by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said members wanted to talk to him because of the widely reported allegations that have been made against him, which he denies, and because of his relationship with Epstein and what he may have seen.

The committee is looking into Epstein's crimes and his wider sex trafficking network. Andrew was given until today, 20 November, to respond.

Legally he isn't obliged to talk to them, and to be honest it's hard to imagine why he would.

The only time he has spoken at length about the allegations against him and his relationship with Epstein was that Newsnight interview in 2019, and we all know how much of a disaster that was.

Yes, this could be an opportunity for him to publicly apologise for keeping up his links with Epstein, which he has never done before, or show some sympathy towards Epstein's victims, even as he vehemently denies the allegations against him.

But while there is the moral argument that he should tell the committee everything he knows, it could also raise more uncomfortable questions for him, and that could feel like too much of a risk for Andrew and the wider Royal Family.

However, even saying no won't draw all this to a close. There are other outstanding loose ends.

The Metropolitan Police still have to tell us if they intend to take any further action after they said they were looking into claims Andrew had asked one of his officers to dig up dirt on his accuser, Virginia Giuffre.

Read more:
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There could also still be a debate in parliament about the Andrew problem.

The Liberal Democrats have said they want to use their opposition debating time to bring the issue to the floor of the House of Commons, while other MPs on the Public Accounts Committee have signalled their intention to look into Andrew's finances and housing arrangements.

And then there are the wider Epstein files over in America, and what information they may hold.

From developments this week, it seems we are edging ever closer to seeing those released.

All of this may mean Andrew in other ways is forced to say more than he wants to, even without opening up to the Congress committee.