WATCH: Trump Waffled on Releasing Epstein Files in Fox News Interview Last Year
President Donald Trump waffled when asked if he would declassify all of the files related to the Jeffrey Epstein case during a Fox News interview last year.
During a sit down with Fox and Friends last summer, Trump was asked about the declassification of files relating to 9/11, the JFK assassination, and the crimes and death of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The original televised segment of the show aired only Trump’s initial, affirmative answer, before cutting straight to another question from then-Fox host Pete Hegseth.
But in the full footage, which later aired on a Fox radio show and then on Fox & Friends, Trump sounded much less definitive. After asking about both 9/11 and JFK, host Rachel Campos-Duffy followed up by asking, “Would you declassify the Epstein files?”
Here’s how the exchange went from there:
DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, yeah, I would.
RACHEL CAMPOS-DUFFY: All right.
TRUMP: I guess I would. I think that less so because, you don’t know, you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would, or at least—
CAMPOS-DUFFY: Do you think that would restore trust — help restore trust?
TRUMP: Yeah. I don’t know about Epstein so much as I do the others. Certainly about the way he died. It’d be interesting to find out what happened there, because that was a weird situation and the cameras didn’t happen to be working, etc., etc. But yeah, I’d go a long way toward that one.
When a joint DOJ and FBI memo released on July 7 stated that “no further disclosure would be appropriate” in the case of the infamous financier and sex offender, many Trump supporters responded with shock and anger.
Many in the MAGA base saw the choice not to release any more evidence as a betrayal, citing claims made by Trump and other prominent members of the administration and DOJ that the files must and would be released.
The president has attempted to quell the unrest of his supporters, standing by Attorney General Pam Bondi – who is receiving a lion’s share of the vitriol – and posting on Truth Social that the base should “not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.”
