Recommendations of the Editorial team
The Trump government officials are as confused as many others about the claim of spokesman for the House of Representatives Mike Johnson, Donald Trump was an FBI information in the Jeffrey Epstein case. Epstein died in custody in 2019, where he was charged with dozens of minor girls because of sexual abuse and human trade. Trump and Epstein connected a well -documented friendship.
Johnson’s statement raises puzzles
On Thursday, Johnson made the irritating remark when a reporter asked him to be a “Democrat Epstein Swindle” for Trump’s repeated name of the Epstein scandal.
“What Trump refers to is the dizziness that the Democrats use to attack him,” said Johnson. The President’s views were “incorrectly presented”. “He does not say that what Epstein has done is a dizziness. It is a terrible, unspeakable evil, and he believes that. When he heard the rumor for the first time, he threw it out of Mar-A-Lago.”
Then Johnson added the astonishing claim that Trump was “an FBI-informationant to bring the whole thing”.
The remark spread rapidly on the net-a feast for “South Park” satire.
Confusion in the Trump camp
According to five government officials and people from Trump’s environment, Johnson’s statement on Thursday caused great confusion in the president’s ranks. Several high-ranking civil servants were surprised or simply stunned, which the spokesman close to Trump might have meant.
For some in the administration, the confusion continued until Saturday. Some were unsure whether Johnson alluded to previously unknown insider information or whether he had promised himself.
“What the hell is he doing?” Asked a senior government representative to Rolling Stone.
Other Trump consultants suspect that Johnson referred to previous media reports-but these did not go that far to present Trump as a FBI informationant.
Open questions and political tensions
FBI officials, including Vice Director Dan Bongino, did not respond on Saturday to inquiries from Rolling Stone whether Trump had spied up for the federal authorities. So far, Trump himself has not commented on Johnson’s claim.
The statements fall into a time when Epstein’s victims put pressure on the Ministry of Justice together with MPs, to release further information. “Less than one percent of these files was published,” said Democrat Ro Khanna on Wednesday.
Trump promised the publication of the so-called Epstein files in the 2024 election campaign. But in July the Ministry of Justice rowed back: Epstein had committed suicide, and there was no “customer list”.
Fight for the Epstein files
Khanna and 212 Democrats as well as four Republicans support the “Epstein Files Transparency Act”, an application to force the DOJ to publish all non -classified documents on Epstein and his complicity Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison for human trafficking.
Meanwhile, Republican managers are pushing their faction to stand behind the committee for supervision and government reform. This published 33,000 documents on Tuesday – without any noteworthy revelations.
Meanwhile, survivors collect a list of Epstein’s contacts based on their own reports, while the Trump government continues to claim that there is no list of Epstein.