Vice President JD Vance believes the administration fumbled in its handling of the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, telling Joe Rogan that “we mishandled it.”
In an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, the vice president weighed in on the controversy over making documents related to the deceased convicted child sex offender public. He also addressed theories of Epstein’s connections and other conspiracies but emphasized that “there’s not some document” that clearly makes the link.
“We absolutely screwed up the comms of the Epstein files, like we just did,” Vance said.
(Video Credit: Joe Rogan Experience)
“But do I think the reason we screwed up the comms is because we were trying to hide something? No. I think the reason we screwed up the comms of the Epstein files is one, you know…Pam Bondi said the client list is on my desk, right?” Vance continued, referring to then-Attorney General Pam Bondi.
“I don’t know what the purpose of it was, but I know that the effect of it was to make people mistrust the entire effort,” he said, adding that Bondi “overstated what we had and what we didn’t have. And I think that she, you know, got roasted for it publicly by a lot of people, including me.”
Vance remarked that he has “probably gone down every single rabbit hole” of Epstein conspiracy theories
“So like when people say has has what you’ve seen on the inside make you think that…Epstein never blackmailed people or that Epstein never engaged in broader sex trafficking? No, absolutely not. What I have seen, and I’ve looked at most of the files, is that there just wasn’t dispositive evidence. And if that dispositive evidence ever existed, it was probably destroyed after 2006, 2007,” Vance told Rogan.
He went on to address some of the conspiracies and emphasized that, ultimately, Epstein was a “scumbag.”
“If people want to say we mishandled the Epstein release, guilty. We did mishandle it, especially the communications of it,” Vance said.
“What do you think should have been done?” asked Rogan.
“I think we should have just dropped everything at the very beginning and, like I was saying, it takes a little time to review the stuff, to find the stuff, to redact things where you have victims and so forth, but we should have just done it as quickly as possible,” the vice president replied.
When Rogan noted that some of the names that were redacted were not of victims, Vance responded, “I’ve looked into this and my understanding of this, having looked at a lot of this but not all of it, is that it is sometimes hard to draw a distinction between victim and co-conspirator.”
“What DOJ tried to do is make that judgment as best they could and release as much as possible,” he said.
Vance admitted he believes there is a “broader conspiracy.”
“There’s a story there and, you know, I will go to my deathbed believing there is a story there, but I can’t prove it,” he said. “And I promise you there’s not some document, at least that I’m hiding, that allows us to prove exactly what was going on and how.”
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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida. Powers also contributes to BizPac Review.
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