Four days after US vice president JD Vance reportedly urged senior Trump administration officials to devise a new communications strategy for handling the scandal surrounding the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, he appears to have reignited controversy instead.
In a Fox News interview broadcast on Sunday, Vance sought to deflect criticism of the administration’s refusal to release the “Epstein files” by blaming Democrats. He accused President Joe Biden of having done “absolutely nothing” on the issue during his time in the White House.
“And now President Trump has demanded full transparency from this. And yet somehow the Democrats are attacking him and not the Biden administration, which did nothing for four years,” Vance said.
However, Epstein’s former associate Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of conspiring with him to sexually abuse multiple underage girls and sentenced to 20 years in prison during Biden’s presidency.
Within minutes of the broadcast, social media users were calling once again for the release of the files. Clips of Vance attacking Democrats circulated widely on X, with the vice-president claiming that “leftwing politicians and leftwing billionaires” frequently visited Epstein’s private island. He repeated Donald Trump’s previously debunked assertion that former president Bill Clinton had visited the island “dozens of times”. Clinton admits to flying on Epstein’s jet but denies visiting the island.
“Fine. Release all the files,” said conservative commentator and Trump critic Bill Kristol, who demanded the documents be published in full, without redactions of “clients, enablers, and see-no-evil associates”.
Barack Obama’s former chief speechwriter Jon Favreau added: “Release the names! Democrats, Republicans, billionaires, or not. What are you afraid of, JD Vance?” Favreau also claimed that Trump’s name appeared in the files, referencing a Wall Street Journal report last month that a justice department review under Bondi found the president’s name “multiple times”.
Some users reposted footage of Trump hosting Epstein and Maxwell at his Mar-a-Lago resort. Epstein died in August 2019, while awaiting trial in a Manhattan jail during Trump’s first presidency. His death was ruled a suicide.
The White House has been left in an awkward position over the Epstein affair, which has fuelled conspiracy theories among Trump supporters, conspiracies that senior figures in his 2024 campaign had at times encouraged.
In July, the justice department stated there was no “Epstein client list” and that no further files would be released, contradicting earlier remarks from senior Trump officials, including Bondi’s February claim that a list was “sitting on my desk right now to review”. The decision provoked uproar across the political spectrum.
One of the most viral clips following the reversal was Vance himself telling podcaster Theo Von, two weeks before the election: “Seriously, we need to release the Epstein list, that is an important thing.”
