Popular podcaster Joe Rogan ripped into the Justice Department’s handling of the so-called Epstein files as House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans broke away from President Donald Trump over the issue.
Earlier this month, the DOJ and FBI said in a memo there was never any client list of high-profile names associated with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The Trump administration has faced backlash over this new development, as it had promised to release files about the federal investigation into the late financier.
Rogan ranted about the feds on an episode of his podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” released Tuesday.
“They’ve got videotape and all a sudden they don’t,” Rogan said. “You had the director of the FBI on this show saying, ‘If there was [a videotape], nothing you’re looking for is on those tapes,’” referring to Kash Patel’s interview with Rogan in June.
During his appearance, Patel indicated there was no video evidence of people committing crimes on Epstein’s private island.
“Why’d they say there was thousands of hours of tapes of people doing horrible s***? Why’d they say that? Didn’t [Attorney General] Pam Bondi say that?” Rogan said during Tuesday’s rant.
Bondi told reporters in May, “There are tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child porn and there are hundreds of victims,” according to the Miami Herald.
The feds’ July memo said there was “a large volume of images of Epstein, images and videos of victims who are either minors or appear to be minors, and over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography.”
But when it came to potential allegations against third parties, the memo stated: “There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions.”
Johnson, a Louisiana Republican and close ally to Trump, told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson in an interview Tuesday he supported the release of the Epstein files.
“I’m for transparency,” Johnson said, per The Washington Post. “It’s a very delicate subject, but we should put everything out there and let the people decide it.”
Despite his vocal support, Johnson opposed a procedural motion advanced by House Democrats Tuesday that would have allowed lawmakers to vote to release the Epstein files.
But Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, wrote on X Tuesday he would force a House vote on “releasing the COMPLETE files.”
“We all deserve to know what’s in the Epstein files, who’s implicated, and how deep this corruption goes. Americans were promised justice and transparency,” he said.
Earlier this month, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a prominent Georgia figure in Trump’s base, told Real America’s Voice network, “I think the Department of Justice and the FBI has more explaining to do — this is Jeffrey Epstein,” per The Hill.
“This is the most famous pedophile in modern-day history, and people are absolutely not going to accept just a memo that was written that says there is no client list,” she said.
Trump on Tuesday claimed that former President Barack Obama and former FBI Director James Comey “made up” the Epstein files.
Leaving for an event in Pennsylvania from the White House, the president was asked by a reporter if Attorney General Bondi had revealed whether his name appeared in any of the Justice Department’s files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“She’s given us just a very quick briefing, and in terms of the credibility of the different things that they’ve seen,” Trump said. “And I would say that, you know, these files were made up by Comey. They were made up by Obama.”
Obama, a Democrat, served in the White House from 2009 to 2017, while Comey led the FBI from 2013 until May 2017. Epstein died in prison in 2019.
When asked about the memo at a recent Cabinet meeting, Trump said, “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years.”
“I mean, I can’t believe you’re asking a question on Epstein at a time like this, where we’re having some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened in Texas. It just seems like a desecration,” Trump said, referring to the July 4 flooding disaster along the Guadalupe River.
