House Speaker Mike Johnson is walking back his initial claim that Donald Trump was an “FBI informant” in the case against Jeffrey Epstein. The comment, which Johnson made last week to reporters on Capitol Hill, was a stunning assertion that raised a lot of logical questions. Now, Johnson’s office has released a statement that rephrases the president’s supposed involvement, changing the narrative from a formal relationship with the FBI to simply being “willing to help prosecutors.”
When Johnson first made his claim, he was defending Donald Trump’s remarks about the ongoing release of Epstein documents being a “Democrat hoax”. Johnson clarified that what Trump was actually calling a hoax was the idea that Democrats were using the case to attack him, not what Epstein did. It’s a “terrible, unspeakable evil,” Johnson said, adding that Trump himself believes this. To support this, Johnson then said that Trump was “an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down”.
