WASHINGTON ― Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked an effort requiring the Trump Department of Justice to release more documents relating to American financier and child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) forced a vote on an amendment to the annual defense authorization bill that would have compelled the administration to release more files within 30 days of the measure’s passage. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) were the only Republican senators who joined all Democrats in support of the amendment.
Schumer’s move came as a surprise since typically only the Senate majority leader ― Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) ― can schedule a vote in the upper chamber. When Thune didn’t “fill” the amendment tree on the defense bill, a procedural maneuver that blocks other senators from offering amendments, Schumer took the rare step of filing cloture and setting up a vote.
Republicans reacted angrily, calling it a stunt and accusing the New York Democrat of injecting politics into the typically bipartisan defense bill.
“It’s political theater, is all this is, and Schumer doesn’t surprise me, because he’s running scared of AOC, instead of actually trying to lead his conference,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) told HuffPost.
Mullin argued that it is impossible to force the DOJ to release more information about Epstein since judges involved in his legal cases have refused to do so.
“Congress can pass whatever resolution we want. If the information that DOJ has — that’s already been heard in the grand jury — we can’t force them to release it. It’s a do-nothing vote,” he said.
Nevertheless, Schumer’s gambit forced Republicans to burn valuable floor time and put them in the awkward position of taking a recorded vote against something they have pushed for in the past: the release of more information relating to Epstein and his activities.
Since Epstein’s death in 2019, top Republicans, including many GOP senators, have alleged without evidence that top Democratic politicians and donors were somehow involved in a cover-up to hide their associations with the financier. Now that Trump is in office, however, Republicans maintain there’s nothing foul going on and that no more information ought to be made public. And Democrats have only been eager to turn the tables on them, pushing for the release of more documents in both chambers of Congress.
“There’s been so much lying, obfuscation, cover ups. The American people need to see everything that’s in the Epstein file,” Schumer said Wednesday. “We’re going to keep fighting until these files are released.”