House Speaker Mike Johnson is distancing himself from President Donald Trump on the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Johnson said the controversy around the late sex offender’s case is “not a hoax” and urged “full transparency” in an interview with CBS News’ chief Washington correspondent, Major Garrett, that aired Thursday.
Johnson’s comment directly undercuts Trump’s narrative that the backlash over his handling of the Epstein files is a “hoax” engineered by Democrats.
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“Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bulls--t,’ hook, line, and sinker,” Trump,79, wrote on Truth Social last week.
Johnson has shut down the House early for its summer recess to sideline a bipartisan effort to force the release of Epstein-related material.
But the speaker told Garrett he had the “same concern and question that a lot of people do” regarding the Justice Department’s (DOJ) decision not to release more information on the case.
The DOJ’s move sparked outrage from Trump’s MAGA base, many of whom had awaited the release of the Epstein files for years, believing them to implicate powerful elites in his crimes.
Garrett asked, “This is not a hoax, in other words?”
“Oh, it’s not a hoax. Of course not,” Johnson replied.
Trump, whose name was reported to appear in the files multiple times by The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, lamented last week that “all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success-starved Dems, is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax.”
The Louisiana congressman’s interview is sure to reignite calls for answers and frustrate the president’s effort to bury the issue.
“We want full transparency,” Johnson said. “We want everybody who is involved in any way with the Epstein evils—let’s call it what it was—to be brought to justice as quickly as possible. We want the full weight of the law on their heads.”
He noted that he had “never seen the Epstein evidence.”
Johnson has accused Democrats of playing “political games” by pushing for votes to release information related to the investigation into Epstein, who was once Trump’s friend.
However, on Thursday, three Republicans joined Democrats on the House Oversight panel to pass a vote subpoenaing the DOJ for files on Epstein.
