Venezuela might be top of the agenda as Congress returns from its holiday recess, but Democratic lawmakers have not forgotten that the Trump administration has missed a key deadline regarding the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday slammed the Justice Department for failing to submit a report to Congress required by the law that forced the release of the files.
He noted in a post that it was “required to include a list of all government officials and politically exposed persons named or referenced in the released materials, without redactions.”
“What are they trying to hide?” Schumer wrote in a lengthy post on X.
The January 3 deadline for the Justice Department to explain its redactions for the produced documents came and went without a response, the same day the U.S. carried out its strike on Venezuela.
The Democratic senator noted that it has been seventeen days since the Justice Department first violated the law by failing to release all the Epstein files within 30 days of Trump signing it.
Instead, the Justice Department last month released a trove of files, many of which were heavily redacted.
Trump officials said that more files would be released in the coming weeks rather than meeting the deadline. Several more tranches have been dropped since.
In a stunning admission just before Christmas, the Justice Department revealed it had discovered over a million more files related to Jeffrey Epstein in the Southern District of New York.
It was then revealed that the Justice Department was scrambling to recruit 400 lawyers to help review 5.2 million pages of documents related to the convicted sex offender, according to the New York Times, just before the new year.
“Here’s what we’ve seen: Less than 40,000 pages released since Dec. 19, heavily redacted, none of the key documents, and no new information on the 10 alleged Epstein co-conspirators,” Schumer wrote on Monday.
He warned that Congress does not even “truly know how many more files there are to be released” and accused the Justice Department of lawlessness.
Schumer was not the only lawmaker who returned to Washington on Monday with the Epstein files still top of mind.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee returned from recess with renewed focus on the files.
“There’s a lot going on in the world that’s important,” they wrote on X. “And that includes our work on the Epstein files. We won’t forget, and we won’t be distracted.”
