The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, announced on Monday he will introduce a resolution directing the Senate to take legal action against the justice department over its incomplete release of files related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“I am introducing a resolution directing the Senate to initiate legal action against DoJ for its blatant disregard of the law in its refusal to release the complete Epstein files,” Schumer said in a statement on social media. “The American people deserve full transparency, and Senate Democrats will use every tool at our disposal to ensure they get it. This administration cannot be allowed to hide the truth.”
If passed, the resolution would authorize the Senate to file a lawsuit seeking a court order forcing the justice department to release the complete set of documents.
The move comes after the Trump administration’s failure to meet a 19 December deadline established by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Congress passed last month and Trump signed into law. The law mandated the justice department release all documents related to Epstein by that date.
Instead, on Friday, the department published only a portion of the files, providing more than 7,700 links to photos and court documents. The attorney general, Pam Bondi, described this as “the first phase”, though missing the deadline for a full release means administration officials are breaking the law.
Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, defended the limited release. “The reason why we are still reviewing documents and still continuing our process is simply … to protect victims,” he said, adding that critics “apparently don’t want us to protect victims”.
The partial file dump was further complicated over the weekend when the justice department temporarily removed an image containing a photograph of Donald Trump before restoring it on Sunday.
Legal experts told the Guardian that Congress does possess mechanisms to enforce compliance, but significant obstacles exist. Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor, explained that while Congress could hold Bondi or Blanche in contempt, any such referral would go to the justice department itself, which was unlikely to prosecute its own officials.
Rahmani suggested Congress would be more likely to file a lawsuit seeking a court order to compel document production. Eric Faddis, a Colorado trial lawyer and former prosecutor, noted Congress could vote to hold officials in contempt, with the sergeant at arms potentially detaining them until they comply. He added that officials might face federal prosecution for obstruction of Congress or evidence tampering if an investigation found noncompliance.
Faddis suggested another course of action that could work: impeachment.
The California representative Ro Khanna, who co-authored the transparency act, has now called for impeachment proceedings against Bondi for failing to comply with the law – a message echoed by the New York representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican and the bill’s other co-author, posted a screenshot of the law on social media with the 30-day deadline highlighted.
In another post on Monday, Massie said: “The survivors deserve justice. The DOJ release does not comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act and does not provide what the survivors are guaranteed under the new law.”
Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, said the release was “inadequate”.
“It falls short of what the law requires,” he said during an appearance on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, adding that the justice department was meant “to provide a written explanation to Congress and to the American people as to why they’ve withheld certain documents” in the next 15 days.
