The Senate’s leading Democrat is set to tee up the latest twist in the saga of the secret files of former financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer plans to call for an FBI investigation Tuesday into whether foreign governments are trying to use the Epstein files against U.S. President Donald Trump.
Democrats have seized on Trump’s reluctance to release the files as a political vulnerability, but this latest move by Schumer is an attempt to elevate the scandal to having potential national security implications.
Per Politico’s Playbook, Schumer will call for a ‘risk assessment to examine whether foreign countries might have tried to access the Epstein files and possibly use the information therein as leverage over Trump.’
At a press conference during his trip to Scotland on Monday, Trump said that all of the hubbub about the files was a ‘hoax’, while also noting that the ‘files were run by sick, sick people’ during the last administration who can ‘put things in the file that was a fake.’
Trump is known to have run in the same social circles as Epstein, and the two were photographed at events together in the late 1990’s and early 2000s. Their friendship doesn’t mean the president took part in any inappropriate activity.
A Wall Street Journal Report released earlier this month reported that Trump was one of Epstein’s friends who wrote him a letter for his 50th birthday in 2003, accompanied by a sketch of a naked woman, prompting president to deny that reporting and sue the paper.
The Trump administration’s refusal to release any more files about Jeffrey Epstein has dominated the news cycle for most of the month and both the president’s political allies and adversaries are growing weary.
Portrait of American financier Jeffrey Epstein (left) and real estate developer Donald Trump as they pose together at the Mar-a-Lago estate, Palm Beach, Florida, 1997
US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer speaks during a press conference at the US Capitol, Washington, DC, USA, 22 July 2025
Donald Trump and Jeffery Epstein chat at a social event in a still from an NBC News video from the early 2000s
Even members of the president’s own political party have been critical of the administration’s handling of the files.
Eric Burlison, a Missouri House Republican, told CNN’s Manu Raju Sunday that part of the issue is ‘that there were false expectations that are created, and that’s a political mistake.’
‘I think that saying that you’re going to be able to deliver when you haven’t even looked at all of the files, what’s available, was probably a misstep,’ Burlison said.
During the course of his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump promised to release the files, but has yet to do so in his second term.
Only 16 percent of respondents to a recent Emerson College poll said they approve ‘of the Trump administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.’
