Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) on Sunday slammed President Donald Trump for backing further investigations into Jeffrey Epstein, suggesting the inquiries are little more than a “last-ditch effort” to stop further information on the deceased New York financier from being released to the public.
“You know, the president’s been saying this is a hoax. He’s been saying that for months. Well, he’s just now decided to investigate a hoax, if it’s a hoax,” Massie said during an ABC interview, referring to Trump’s recent decision to ask the Department of Justice and FBI to scrutinize Epstein’s ties to leading Democrats.
The Kentucky Republican said the investigations Trump announced might derail efforts he is leading in the House to force the Justice Department to release more of the government’s files on Epstein.
“And I have another concern about these investigations that he’s announced. If they have ongoing investigations in certain areas, those documents can’t be released. So this might be a big smokescreen, these investigations, to open a bunch of them as a last-ditch effort to prevent the release of the Epstein files,” Massie added.
The House is set to vote on ordering the government to release more of the Epstein files this week, after Massie helped lead a successful bipartisan effort centered on using a discharge petition to force the vote in the lower chamber.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said last Wednesday he plans to hold the vote after Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) became the 218th lawmaker to sign on to the petition, pushing it to the magic number of signatures needed to schedule the vote.
On Sunday, Johnson said he hoped the vote would put to rest speculation that Epstein, a convicted sex offender, held nefarious ties to Trump.
“They’re doing this to go after President Trump on this theory that he has something to do with it. He does not,” Johnson said during a Fox News interview.
“Epstein is their entire game plan, so we’re going to take that weapon out of their hands,” the House speaker said Democrats. “Let’s just get this done and move it on. There’s nothing to hide.”
The Trump administration has expressed concern that phrasing in Massie’s Epstein Files Transparency Act does not adequately protect victims who had accused Epstein of sexual abuse allegations. And Johnson has dismissed the petition as a “moot point,” due to the investigations being carried out elsewhere, including on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has resulted in thousands of pages of documents being released, including more than 20,000 last week.
Trump has denounced Massie and other lawmakers who have signed onto the discharge petition over their efforts, arguing the Justice Department’s investigation into Epstein has been as transparent as possible.
“The Democrats are doing everything in their withering power to push the Epstein Hoax again, despite the DOJ releasing 50,000 pages of documents, in order to deflect from all of their bad policies and losses, especially the SHUTDOWN EMBARRASSMENT, where their party is in total disarray, and has no idea what to do,” the president said on Friday.
“Some Weak Republicans have fallen into their clutches because they are soft and foolish. Epstein was a Democrat, and he is the Democrat’s problem, not the Republican’s problem! Ask Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, and Larry Summers about Epstein, they know all about him, don’t waste your time with Trump. I have a Country to run!” Trump continued.
On Sunday, Massie rejected allegations he’s chasing slim leads in the Epstein investigation, and suggested bad actors are involved in Trump-backed efforts behind a campaign to oust him from the House.
“Dogs don’t bark at parked cars,” the Kentucky lawmaker said. “He’s being a bully or trying to be a bully, and they’re trying to beat me here in Kentucky. But here’s what’s interesting. The people financing this campaign consist completely of three billionaires, and they’re all in the Epstein class. In fact, one of them is named in Epstein’s phone book, not the secret files that the FBI is keeping, but in Epstein’s phone book. So it’s a small world.”
Meanwhile, speculation is popping up in the halls of Congress that Epstein may have held ties to the intelligence community.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) suggested on Sunday that he could have worked for the Israeli government, citing emails she said the House Oversight Committee recently released that purported to show the deceased financier held ties to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
“I’m questioning that government in particular and questioning any other foreign government,” Greene said. “We saw him making business deals with them, also business deals that involved the Israeli government and scenes led into their intel agencies.”
Trump was one of many powerful figures who knew Epstein for years before disavowing the New York mogul after he was charged with sex crimes.
Former President Bill Clinton was among the leading political figures Epstein was known to share relationships with, as well as former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchel, who served in the Clinton administration from 1995 to 2001 as the U.S. special envoy for Northern Ireland. Other influential leaders Epstein was connected to included world-renowned scientists at Harvard University, MIT, and Princeton, Nobel Laureates like Stephen Hawking, and a deep friendship with Lex Wexner, the founder of a global retail empire that included Victoria’s Secret.
Trump reflected on his relationship to Epstein in a statement to New York Magazine in 2002 for the outlet’s profile on Epstein, which also scrutinized the New York financier’s deep friendship with former Clinton, who called him “a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of twenty-first-century science.”
“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump told the magazine a few years before the two men appeared to break off their relationship around 2004. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
Many of those associated with Epstein, including the Clintons and Trump, have denied any knowledge about allegations that the financier held inappropriate sexual relationships with minors and pawned them off to his friends for sexual trysts.
Epstein’s relationship with Bill Clinton, including the pair’s trips to Africa, was well documented before the pair ended their friendship. On one such trip in 2002, Bill Clinton asked Epstein to travel with him and used the financier’s Boeing 727 to fly to Africa on a mission to scrutinize HIV, AIDS, and economic development on the continent.
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The New York Magazine profile also highlighted Bill Clinton’s relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s then-girlfriend, now being questioned by the Justice Department for her knowledge about her former boyfriend’s life.
“The Oxford-educated Maxwell, described by many as a man-eater (she flies her own helicopter and was recently seen dining with Clinton at Nello’s on Madison Avenue), lives in her own townhouse a few blocks away,” it reads.
