The rhetoric marks a dramatic escalation for the Republican president, who has broken with some of his most loyal backers on issues in the past, but never with such fervor.

According to a Quinnipiac University poll, the majority of U.S. voters disapprove of Trump's handling of files related to Epstein, a wealthy financier who died by suicide in jail in August 2019, weeks after his arrest on sex trafficking charges.

President Donald Trump called an obsession with the Jeffrey Epstein files a "hoax" and a "scam" by political opponents to distract from his successes.