A Republican politician has claimed that Donald Trump acted as an ‘FBI informant’ concerning Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump has recently found himself entangled in the Epstein controversy due to reports of his past friendship with the disgraced financier, who faced charges of sex trafficking in 2019.
However, before Epstein could receive his sentence, he was discovered dead in his prison cell. Conspiracy theories continue to circulate regarding his death, questioning whether it was suicide or something more sinister.
Since taking office in January, Trump promised to declassify documents related to Epstein, but has not fully followed through on this promise.
Speculation has arisen that Trump and his team have withheld some of these documents due to their potentially incriminating nature, considering Trump once referred to Epstein as a ‘terrific guy’.
In response to increasing pressure, more Epstein-related documents have been released in recent days, comprising over 33,000 pages. These documents, however, offered limited new insights.
Although Trump and Epstein were once acquaintances, they reportedly had a falling out, and by the time of Epstein’s 2019 arrest, Trump claimed he hadn’t communicated with him for 15 years, as reported by PBS News.
In addition to their estrangement, Trump was alleged to be an ‘FBI informant’ regarding Epstein.
These comments came from US House Speaker Mike Johnson, who informed reporters last Thursday (September 4), according to The Guardian: “[Trump] was an FBI informant to try and take this stuff down.”
Johnson additionally asserted that Trump had been ‘misrepresented’ and that the supposed ‘hoax’ he refers to in connection with Epstein is ‘the hoax that the Democrats are using to try to attack him’.
Johnson has since retracted his statements concerning Trump being labeled as an ‘informant’.
“What I was referring to in that long conversation was what the [Epstein] victims’ attorney said,” Johnson clarified to reporters when further questioned about his comments from the previous week.
According to CNN, Johnson explained: “More than a decade ago, President Trump kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago, and he was one of the only people, one of the only prominent people, as everyone has reported… that he was willing to help law enforcement go after this guy who was a disgusting child abuser, sex trafficker, all the allegations. That’s what they heard. So the president was helpful in that.”
Johnson admitted uncertainty regarding whether he ‘used the right terminology’ when referring to Trump as an informant but emphasized that it’s ‘common knowledge’ that Trump sought to assist in bringing Epstein down.
“This is much ado about nothing,” concluded the House Speaker.