(CNN) — Vice President JD Vance said the Trump administration “absolutely screwed up the comms” around the Jeffrey Epstein files and should have released everything immediately, while insisting the administration was not trying to conceal information.
“I say this with all candor, like we absolutely screwed up the comms of the Epstein files, like we just did,” Vance said on “The Joe Rogan Experience” when asked whether there had been “undue influence” in trying to keep the files under wraps.
“But do I think the reason we screwed up the comms is because we were trying to hide something? No,” Vance said in the podcast episode released Wednesday.
Vance’s comments come as the administration has been dogged by blowback from the president’s own base over its handling of the Epstein files.
As for what went wrong, the vice president pointed to then-Attorney General Pam Bondi’s public comments suggesting a purported client list was on her desk, while he noted that the binders of information handed out to right-wing social media influencers in February 2025 were “largely documents that were already released.”
“I don’t know what the purpose of it was, but I know the effect of it was to make people mistrust the entire effort,” Vance said, adding that he didn’t think Bondi was doing “anything malicious.”
“I think Pam was trying to respond to the political moment. I think she overstated what we had and what we didn’t have, and I think she got roasted for it publicly by a lot of people, including me.”
The vice president reiterated that he’s “one of the OG Epstein conspiracy theorists,” saying, “I’ve probably gone down every single rabbit hole.” He argued the “original sin” of the Epstein investigation dated back to 2007 and 2008, arguing it was “way too narrow” and faulting former US Attorney Alex Acosta, who negotiated a controversial plea deal with Epstein.
“If there was a broader conspiracy — and you know my view is that there probably was — the evidence that existed in 2007, that was the opportunity to get it out,” Vance said.
Asked about theories that Epstein may have been part of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, Vance said, “Yeah, Mossad or CIA or some other deep state.”
“He clearly had connections to the upper, the highest levels of American intelligence. He clearly had connections to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence,” he added.
Vance also defended President Donald Trump’s role in releasing the Epstein files, rejecting claims that the president was pressured into doing so. Trump “could have killed” the congressional effort to compel the Justice Department to release the files if he had wanted to, Vance argued. (Trump and GOP leaders had worked furiously to try to quash the effort to force the release of the files, before Trump reversed course at the last minute.)
Still, Vance conceded that that it took longer than it should have for the administration to release the files.
“If people want to say we mishandled the Epstein release, guilty. We did mishandle it, especially the communications of it,” he said.
“I think that we should have just dropped everything at the very beginning,” he said. “We should have just done it as quickly as possible.”
The-CNN-Wire
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