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No issue has driven such a wedge between the MAGA base and Donald Trump as the administration’s unwillingness to release all of the documents the government has on the president’s old pal, sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

On several occasions, including on Wednesday, just as several of Epstein’s victims were participating in a press conference on Capitol Hill, Trump has called the push for transparency and accountability in the case a “hoax.”

And House GOP leaders fled Washington, DC, prior to their summer recess rather than allowing a vote on a measure that would have forced the files to be made public.

Perhaps they all thought that the furor over the administration’s stonewalling on the issue would die down in the intervening weeks.

If so, they were sorely mistaken.

Just as Congress has returned this week, so has the outrage over what many Americans perceive as a classic example of how there is one set of justice for them, and another for the rich and powerful, no matter how monstrous their crimes may be.

And Epstein’s were especially heinous, as accounts from just a few of his victims made clear on Wednesday.

It stands to reason that most Americans never heard the firsthand account of these women, some of whom were minors at the time of their abuse and have never spoken in public.

In heart-wrenching accounts, they not only detailed what happened to them but also what it means to know that the government is not releasing information that could help them heal and bring them a sense of justice.

Because it was not just Epstein and his confidante Ghislaine Maxwell who abused hundreds of young women, but also associates of the financier, who died in prison in 2019.

Who were they?

That is one of the big questions that the release of the Epstein files is supposed to shed light on.

And if the government doesn’t act, then the victims have indicated that they will.

“A lot of us survivors know we’ve been compiling lists of our own, and we have so many other survivors,” Epstein accuser Lisa Phillips told NBC News this week. “Please come forward, and we’ll compile our own list and seek justice on our own.”

For now, however, they want Congress to pass legislation that would force the Trump administration to release all of the documents.

That’s the goal of a discharge petition that Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) have introduced.

To force a vote on the measure and bypass GOP leaders, they have to collect the signatures of 218 House lawmakers. Since all 212 Democrats are expected to support it, only six Republicans have to sign on. So far, there are four: Massie and Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA), Lauren Boebert (CO), and Nancy Mace (SC).

The White House hopes to keep it that way.

According to Massie, it has labeled a vote in support of the measure as a “hostile act.”

“They’re threatening anyone who helps bring true transparency and justice for the survivors,” he said.

To placate their base, Republican leaders offered a non-binding resolution directing the House Oversight Committee to continue its investigation into the matter.

However, at the press conference with Epstein victims, Massie said this resolution “does absolutely nothing” and urged two more Republicans to step forward and join his effort.

Earlier this week, that panel touted its release of 30,000 Epstein documents. However, the vast majority of them had been made public previously, and others were heavily redacted.

It seems unlikely that this will appease MAGA faithful for whom the Epstein saga goes to the heart of the extent to which the country’s elites are protecting each other.

So far, Republican leaders have resisted the pressure they have heaped on GOP lawmakers. Their main argument is that these documents should not be released in order to protect the women that were abused.

However, after many of those victims spoke out in favor of transparency, it is an argument that increasingly rings hollow.