Senate Democrats are mounting a legal offensive against the Trump administration for its handling of the release of files and materials related to Jeffrey Epstein, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has teed up the first salvo.
Schumer on Monday announced that he would file a resolution that would compel the Senate to take legal action against the Trump administration for ‘illegally refusing to release the complete Epstein files and heavily redacting the files that are released.’
‘The law Congress passed is crystal clear: release the Epstein files in full, so Americans can see the truth,’ Schumer said in a statement. ‘Instead, the Trump Department of Justice dumped redactions and withheld the evidence — that breaks the law. Today, I am introducing a resolution to force the Senate to take legal action and compel this administration to comply.’
Schumer’s move comes just days after the Department of Justice (DOJ) dumped several hundred thousand documents and photos from its trove of materials related to the late Epstein. Schumer and Senate Democrats warned ahead of the document dump on Friday that unless the DOJ fully complied with the recently passed law, they would seek legal action.
They argue that Attorney General Pam Bondi and the DOJ didn’t follow the law, which Congress passed nearly unanimously out of both chambers last month.
Schumer, who forced a successful vote in the Senate on the Epstein Files Transparency Act, previously argued that the ‘heavily redacted documents released by the Department of Justice today is just a fraction of the whole body of evidence.’
‘Simply releasing a mountain of blacked-out pages violates the spirit of transparency and the letter of the law,’ Schumer said in a statement. ‘For example, all 119 pages of one document were completely blacked out. We need answers as to why.’
The law required that the DOJ release all unclassified records related to Epstein, his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, known associates and entities linked to Epstein and Maxwell, internal DOJ decision-making on the Epstein case, records on destroying or tampering with documents, and all documents on his detention and death.
There were narrow exceptions to what the government could opt against releasing, including materials that reveal victims’ identities or medical files, child sex abuse materials, information that could jeopardize active investigations, images of graphic death or injury, or classified national security information.
Schumer and congressional Democrats, along with some congressional Republicans, were already peeved that the DOJ wasn’t going to dump every document in its possession by Friday’s deadline.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that day that the agency would be taking a phased approach and said he expected ‘that we’re going to release more documents over the next couple of weeks,’ as the DOJ worked to comb through every document to ensure ‘every victim, their name, their identity, their story, to the extent it needs to be protected, is completely protected.’
But it was the inclusion of several heavily redacted documents without explanation as to why they were blacked out that raised lawmakers’ eyebrows.
Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who also is the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that Friday’s release ‘could have been a win for survivors, accountability, and transparency to the public. It wasn’t.’
He accused the Trump administration of breaking the law with how it handled the document dump and vowed that the Judiciary Committee would investigate.
‘Senate Judiciary Democrats will investigate this violation of law and make sure the American people know about it,’ Durbin said in a statement. ‘The survivors deserve better. It’s clear Donald Trump and his Republican enablers are working for the rich and powerful elites — and not you.’