Vice President JD Vance admitted to podcast host Joe Rogan that the Trump administration was “guilty” of mishandling the Jeffrey Epstein files after the podcaster said the White House’s claims of transparency were little more than a “performative display.”
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The admission came Wednesday on the Joe Rogan Experience, during a lengthy back-and-forth in which Rogan pressed Vance on the administration’s Epstein record.
The exchange centered on a February 2025 episode in which, according to ABC News, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi handed binders labeled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” to conservative influencers at the White House — material that was largely already public.
“We absolutely screwed up the comms of the Epstein files,” Vance said on the podcast.
Rogan zeroed in on Bondi’s earlier claim that an Epstein “client list” was “sitting on my desk” — a statement the Justice Department later walked back, according to the Associated Press, saying its review found no such list existed.
During the exchange, Rogan pressed Vance on the binder stunt directly.
“Well, she — they had binders,” Rogan said.
“But those binders were largely documents that had already been released,” Vance replied.
“So what was the purpose of that performative display of the Epstein files?” Rogan pressed.
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“I don’t know what the purpose of it was,” Vance said, “but I know that the effect of it was to make people mistrust the entire effort.”
“Or at the very least, the people that were involved in the Epstein files that didn’t want them coming out had undue influence,” Rogan said, pressing further.
“If people wanna say we mishandled the Epstein release — guilty,” Vance said. “We did mishandle, especially the communications of it.”
“What do you think should have been done?” Rogan asked.
“I think that we should have just dropped everything at the very beginning,” Vance said.
“But some of the stuff that was redacted — some of the names that were redacted — weren’t victims,” Rogan pointed out.
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