Jake Tapper Warns Public Being ‘Played for Fools’ on Epstein: ‘This Isn’t Going to Go Away!’

CNN anchor Jake Tapper called out the Trump administration’s “case closed” gaslighting of the public over the Jeffrey Epstein files, scowling that the nation was being “played for fools” and warning President Donald Trump that the issue “isn’t going to go away.”

The host tore into the Trump administration’s abrupt about-face on the Epstein case during a blistering segment on The Lead late Tuesday, accusing Trump allies of “clownish” reversals on a scandal they once weaponized.

“How can people be expected to have faith in Trump if he won’t release the Epstein files?” he asked.

Tapper invoked Elon Musk’s viral post claiming “Trump is in the Epstein files” as the reason they hadn’t been released. A message the billionaire deleted two days later. He also spotlighted mounting frustration – including among MAGA diehards – after a Department of Justice memo concluded the convicted pedophile wasn’t murdered, had no client list, and wasn’t blackmailing anyone.

“Despite the fact that the very same administration officials are now asserting there is no there there,” Tapper noted, “many of them were the ones ginning up the controversy before President Trump was re-elected.”

Tapper rolled back clips of ranking Trump officials pushing for the Epstein release. Among them, Attorney General Pam Bondi, who in February told Fox News the Epstein list was “sitting on my desk to be reviewed.” But pressed this week, she walked it back, saying she was referring not to any bombshell client list, but to a batch of historical case files.

The host then ran other receipts. Vice President JD Vance, then campaigning on the Trump 2024 ticket, Kash Patel, now FBI Director, previously blasting the agency he now runs for “protecting the greatest pedophile in human history.” FBI deputy director Dan Bongino declaring on air he’d “never let this go.” And Alina Habba, now U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, who promised the files would be “shocking.”

But since a DOJ memo quietly closed the case, those voices have gone silent or pivoted, Tapper noted, running back a clip of Trump himself shrugging the case off in a Tuesday cabinet meeting.

Tapper continued: “There might not be a list, but there are certainly files that can be released. There’s a trove of information that the Trump administration is right now refusing to share, information that could well point to the powerful folks who availed themselves of the sex trafficking victims of Jeffrey Epstein.”

“This isn’t going to go away,” he warned in closing. “The public – you – you’re being played for fools here.”

Watch above via CNN.