Senate Democrats are using an arcane procedural tool to try to force the Department of Justice to release additional files from the Jeffrey Epstein case – the latest gambit to keep the issue front-and-center as lawmakers prepare for their month-long August recess.
In a new letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democrats who sit on the Senate Homeland Security Committee requested DOJ release all of the files related to Epstein, including audio, video and any other relevant documents.
“After missteps and failed promises by your Department regarding these files, it is essential that the Trump Administration provide full transparency,” the group wrote in a later dated Tuesday.
The letter goes on to request the documents be turned over no later than August 15 and that appropriate accommodations be made to protect victims’ identities. The Democrats are also requesting a briefing no later than August 29.
Democrats are basing their request on a nearly 100-year-old law that allows five or more members of the Senate Homeland Security Committee to request information from the administration even when they are in the minority and lack subpoena power. The law, however, has not been regularly used nor is it clear whether it would yield the documents Democrats are seeking in an extended court fight challenging the request.
Democrats have sought in recent weeks to keep the fight over the Epstein files, and the fallout from it, at the political forefront, viewing it as a key test for President Donald Trump and his ability to contain the fervor for them among his usually loyal base. In the House, an Oversight subcommittee moved in a bipartisan vote to subpoena the Epstein files after Democrats pushed the issue there, and the party has made similar pushes in other committees on both sides of the Capitol.
CNN has reached out to Senate GOP Leader John Thune’s office and the Justice Department for comment on the letter, which was first reported on by The New York Times.
The Democrats’ likelihood of success will hinge in part on the willingness of the Trump administration to put the information out, as a court fight would be unlikely to force the documents over to Congress.
That’s because Congress has struggled for years, especially during Trump’s presidencies, to obtain documents and information from the executive branch. Several times, committees and members have sued, with mixed results that often end years later in negotiation rather than a final court ruling.
In 2017, a small group of House members sued for documents from the General Services Administration related to its contract with the Trump Internation Hotel in Washington.
The House Oversight Committee got some traction at the time from the federal appellate court in DC, which in a split three-judge decision determined members of Congress had the ability to go to court seeking executive branch information if they requested it under the law allowing five senators or seven individual House members to sue.
Five years later, however, the Biden administration was still arguing in court for the same policy the first Trump administration had backed: that individual members of Congress, even ranking minority committee members, didn’t have that level of legal authority.
The Biden administration, in a petition to the Supreme Court in 2022, wrote that members of Congress could always use politics rather than the courts to pressure an administration. The Supreme Court never heard the case, after the Biden administration provided the Democrats in Congress many of the documents they sought.
CNN’s Paula Reid contributed to this report.
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