Jake Tapper Smokes Speaker Johnson With a Brutal Dig About the Epstein Files in Tense CNN Interview

CNN’s Jake Tapper battled with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) over the importance of “transparency for the American people,” in a contentious interview that culminated in a dig about the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Johnson defended the recent actions by the Justice Department — notably the indictment of James Comey — by stating, “they have to hold people accountable. We have to ensure that the rule of law applies to everyone.”

“Does the rule of law have to apply to people who stormed the Capitol on January 6th?” Tapper asked.

“Well, I’m glad you brought that up. There’s new information over the last couple of days about that, as well. Apparently, there were 274 FBI agents in the crowd on January 6th,” Johnson said bringing up the debunked conspiracy theory that the FBI fomented the violence on that day.

“No, no, no, that’s Kash Patel. Kash Patel just…enhanced understanding to that. They were sent there to do crowd control because of everything that was going on…it wasn’t a false flag operation as President Trump suggested,” Tapper said.

Johnson admonished Tapper to “hold on,” adding, “How do you know that? Right? There’s a lot—”

“I’m just going by what Kash Patel said,” Tapper shot back.

“Well, and I’m telling you that there’s videos, and it’s always been disputed — what involvement some of those persons, you know, engaged in. What involvement they had. Did they spur on the crowd? Did they open the gates to allow them in? I don’t know. These are questions, but they should be answered.”

Johnson accused the select committee tasked with investigating President Donald Trump’s involvement in the insurrection of being biased, and said a new select subcommittee is currently “reviewing the investigation of the original J6 committee.”

“My theory is, I’ve always believed that they got rid of evidence and they hid some of this. So, all of it’s going to come out. The American people deserve full transparency,” Johnson said.

Tapper concurred — and proceeded to fire a brutal dig at the Speaker about Jeffrey Epstein.

“Full transparency, one hundred percent,” Tapper said. “I’m always in favor of full transparency, including for the Epstein files, which that will probably come on the floor of the House soon and we’ll have lots of discussions about that.”

“Me, too,” Johnson said.

Watch above, via CNN.