The New York Times reports that seven Democrats on the upper chamber’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee just sent a letter to DOJ demanding that it turn over the information it has compiled related to the investigation pursuant to the 2019 arrest of Jeffrey Epstein on sex-trafficking charges, using a decades-old statute:

Under a section of federal law commonly referred to in the Senate as the “rule of five,” government agencies are required to provide relevant information if any five members of that committee, which is the chamber’s chief oversight panel, request it.

The letter spells out exactly what Democrats are demanding, calling for the release of “all documents, files, evidence, or other materials in the possession of DOJ or FBI related to” Epstein’s prosecution, including “audio and video recordings” and much more.....

A historical parallel here is worth noting. This 1928 law was passed in the wake of the Teapot Dome scandal, according to David Vladeck, a professor of government at Georgetown. That scandal, which involved a corrupt Cabinet member under President Warren Harding taking bribes in exchange for oil leases, resulted in higher public awareness of governmental corruption and the need for better congressional oversight to ensure transparency.

Critically, though, the statute that Senate Democrats are now invoking, Vladeck says, was originally designed to “ensure that the minority” in Congress “has real access to what executive agencies are doing.” As you may have noticed, this is a particularly urgent need right now: Democratic efforts at oversight have been entirely blocked by the GOP majority, which is devoted to protecting Trump at all costs......

Congressional procedure expert Sarah Binder says the whole matter will then turn on what the courts say. “The statute is very clear—agencies shall provide these documents,” Binder told me. “The question is whether the courts would agree that a group of senators, as opposed to the whole chamber, has standing to sue.”

Here there’s reason for (very) cautious optimism. House Democrats got pretty far the last time this was attempted. They invoked the statute in 2017 to try to force the first Trump administration to divulge information related to the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., which raised many ethical issues.[ /excerpt]