Drama erupted on Capitol Hill as outrage continues to boil over the mysterious hush-up surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein files.

As Congress rolled back into session after the holidays, all eyes were supposedly on foreign affairs—think Venezuela—but Democrats had another, juicier scandal in their sights: the Trump-era Justice Department’s apparent dodge on Epstein bombshells.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer took to X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, torching the DOJ for blowing off a crucial deadline to cough up a complete, unredacted report about the disgraced financier’s case. By law, the department was supposed to hand over a no-holds-barred list of every government bigwig and so-called ‘politically exposed person’ found in Epstein’s shadowy files. Instead? Silence—and a whole lot of blackout ink.

‘What’s the Justice Department trying to bury?’ Schumer fumed online, ramping up accusations that officials are stonewalling the truth. The deadline—January 3rd—came and went without even a memo from the DOJ. Coincidentally, this happened on the same day the U.S. rained down strikes in Venezuela, but conspiracy-minded observers noticed the more tantalizing ticking clock on the Epstein saga.

Schumer pointed out that it’s been over two weeks since the Justice Department missed its first legal deadline to release all Epstein files after Trump signed the relevant legislation. What did they do last month? Toss out a small batch of documents, most of them looking like blacked-out Rorschach blots, according to Schumer. Key details and infamous conspirators? Still under wraps, with promises of ‘more files to come’ echoing in the empty halls of justice. Since then, the document dump has been piecemeal at best.

Adding gasoline to the fire, just before Christmas the Justice Department confessed it had unexpectedly unearthed a cache of more than one million additional Epstein-related records stashed in the Southern District of New York. And with a sudden sense of urgency, the department scrambled to gather 400 more lawyers—to sift through an estimated 5.2 million pages, the New York Times revealed in a year-end scoop.

So far, Schumer scoffed, less than 40,000 heavily censored pages have seen daylight since December 19th—barely a drop in the bucket, with no earth-shaking revelations about the ten alleged Epstein co-conspirators. ‘Congress doesn’t even know the true totals,’ Schumer warned, blasting the Justice Department for what he called ‘lawlessness.’

He wasn’t alone in his outrage. Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee returned to Washington with renewed determination, reminding the public on social media that, despite global chaos, ‘the Epstein files’ remain a top priority. ‘We won’t forget, and we won’t be distracted,’ they declared, as the scandal over who’s protecting whom continues to swirl.