Johnson: Trump Was "FBI Informant on Epstein"

Donald Trump was an FBI informant on Jeffrey Epstein, a senior Republican has claimed.

Mike Johnson, the party’s leader in the House of Representatives, made the allegation on CNN after being questioned about Trump’s repeated insistence that the Epstein controversy dogging his second term was a “Democrat-invented hoax”.

The row erupted when Attorney General Pam Bondi said in February that an Epstein “client list” was sitting on her desk. However in July, the department of justice said it found no evidence of a list of clients connected to the paedophile.

In July, the Wall Street Journal reported that Pam Bondi had told Trump his name appeared several times in the files on the convicted sex offender, who was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correction Centre in August 2019.

The controversy has shown little sign of abating.

“What Trump is referring to is the hoax that the Democrats are using to try to attack him,” Johnson said. “I’ve talked to him about this many times, many times. He is horrified. It’s been misrepresented. He’s not saying that what Epstein did is a hoax. It’s a terrible, unspeakable evil. He believes that himself.”

Johnson added: “When he first heard the rumour, he kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago. He was an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down.”

Trump had been friends with Epstein but said he severed ties with the wealthy financier after he poached staff from his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

The Epstein controversy has shaken the Trump administration in recent months.

Some of Trump’s most loyal supporters, including Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson and Right-wing activist Laura Loomer, accused the administration of a lack of transparency.

MAGA was also divided, with many activists suspecting the administration was trying to cover up the identities of influential figures who had been involved with the sex offender’s activities.

It led to demands for Trump to sack Bondi, which he dismissed on social media in July.

“What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’” Trump wrote. “They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! We’re on one Team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening.”

Back in 2019, Trump said Epstein’s death had been covered up and called for a full investigation.

And in 2023, he told Tucker Carlson that it was possible Epstein had been murdered.

But last week, Trump described the scandal as a hoax.

“From what I understand, I could check, but from what I understand, thousands of pages of documents have been given. But it’s really a Democrat hoax because they’re trying to get people to talk about something that’s totally irrelevant to the success that we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president.”