JD Vance's attempt to link Democrats to Epstein renews calls to ‘release the files'
In an interview with Fox News broadcast on Sunday, the vice-president tried to deflect criticism of the administration's refusal to release the Epstein files by blaming Democrats. He accused Joe Biden of doing 'absolutely nothing' about the scandal when he was 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,' he said. Epstein's former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, was convicted of conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse multiple minor girls and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison during the Biden administration.
If Vance's attempt to switch public blame onto Democrats was the big idea to emerge from his strategy meeting with attorney general Pam Bondi and FBI director Kash Patel, which according to CNN he convened at the White House last week, then their labours appear to have backfired. (Vance denied to Fox that they had discussed Epstein at all, though he did acknowledge the meeting took place.)
Within minutes of the Fox News interview being broadcast, social media began to hum with renewed cries of 'release the files!'
Clips of Vanc smearing Democrats quickly began to circulate on X. 'We know that Jeffrey Epstein had a lot of connections with leftwing politicians and leftwing billionaires … Democrat billionaires and Democrat political leaders went to Epstein island all the time. Who knows what they did,' he said. Vance also repeated Trump's previously debunked claim that Bill Clinton had visited Epstein's private island dozens of times. Clinton has acknowledged using Epstein's jet, but denied ever visiting his island.
'Fine. Release all the files,' was the riposte from Bill Kristol, the prominent conservative Never Trumper who urged the documents to be made public with 'no redactions of clients, enablers, and see-no-evil associates'.
Jon Favreau, Barack Obama's former head speechwriter, replied: 'Release the names! Democrats, Republicans, billionaires, or not. What are you afraid of, JD Vance?'
Favreau added that Trump's name 'is in the Epstein files'. That was an apparent reference to a report in the Wall Street Journal last month that a justice department review of the documents conducted under Bondi had found that the president's name did appear 'multiple times'.
Other social media users used the Fox News interview as an excuse to re-run video of Trump in the hosting Epstein and Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago.
Epstein died in August 2019, during Trump's first presidency, while the financier and socialite was awaiting trial in a Manhattan jail; the death was ruled a suicide.
Sign up to This Week in Trumpland
A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration
after newsletter promotion
The White House has been caught in a bind over the Epstein affair which spawned conspiracy theories among many of Trump's supporters, which now senior figures in the administration had actively encouraged during the 2024 campaign.
In July the justice department announced that there was no Epstein client list and that no more files would be made public, a decision that clashed with earlier statements from top Trump officials, including Bondi's statement in February that a client list was 'sitting on my desk right now to review'. The decision triggered an immediate and ongoing uproar that crossed the partisan political divide.
Among the most viral clips in the aftermath of that reversal was video of Vance himself telling the podcaster Theo Von, two weeks before the election: 'Seriously, we need to release the Epstein list, that is an important thing.'
In his Fox News interview Vance also warned that 'you're going to see a lot of people get indicted' after Trump accused Obama of 'treason' and called for his predecessor to be prosecuted.
The director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has passed documents to the justice department that she claims show that the Obama administration maliciously tried to hurt Trump by linking Russian interference in the 2016 election to him.
Obama has dismissed Trump's call for his prosecution as weak and ridiculous.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
19 minutes ago
- The Independent
NYC candidate Zohran Mamdani is making his messaging for the mayoral race clear: Me vs Trump
As he heads into November's general election for New York City mayor, Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani has a warning: If he loses, the next mayor could be in Donald Trump's pocket. Mamdani has launched a 'five boroughs against Trump' tour to draw attention to the president's agenda and how the administration's impact has already been felt throughout the city — from threats to food stamps and healthcare to immigration raids and courthouse arrests. 'There is no borough that will be free from Donald Trump's cruelty,' Mamdani told supporters in Manhattan Monday. But he's also using the tour to tie his opponents — former Governor Andrew Cuomo, current mayor Eric Adams, and Republican challenger Curtis Sliwa — to the president. The race for the Democratic primary saw Mamdani relentlessly focus his campaign around affordability, including no-cost childcare, freezing rent in tens of thousands of rent-controlled apartment units, boosting taxes on corporations and the wealthiest residents to fund free buses, and creating city-owned grocery stores in one of the country's most expensive places to live. That platform remains at the center of his campaign, but Mamdani is ringing alarm bells about the future of the city under the Trump administration with an ill-equipped mayor at the helm — or, worse, one that works in concert with the president. 'We see far too many parallels between Donald Trump and Andrew Cuomo, far too many stories that make clear that both administrations have been characterized by corruption, by a sense of impunity,' Mamdani told reporters Monday at the offices of the 1199SEIU labor union, which had endorsed Cuomo in the primary but is now backing Mamdani. 'We know a fraud when we see one,' he said. Cuomo, who resigned from the governor's office under a cloud of sexual misconduct allegations, conceded to Mamdani in the Democratic primary after losing by nearly 13 points. Then, he entered the general election as an independent, arguing that he faced off against Trump as governor and can do it again as New York City mayor. 'Trump will flatten him like a pancake,' Cuomo recently wrote on X. 'There's only one person in this race who can stand up to Trump: the one who already has, successfully and effectively.' Trump and Cuomo spoke directly about the mayor's race on a recent phone call, according to The New York Times. Both Trump and Cuomo have denied speaking to one another, though the president has been briefed by allies about how best to keep Mamdani out of the race. Mamdani said the call is 'disqualifying' and a 'betrayal of New Yorkers.' 'While housing experts are ringing the alarm, Andrew Cuomo is ringing Donald Trump's cell,' Mamdani told supporters in Brooklyn Tuesday. In a recent meeting with New York business leaders, Cuomo also said he was not 'personally' looking for a fight with the president and said their relationship was more like a 'dysfunctional marriage.' Adams, meanwhile, has avoided speaking out against the president after the Department of Justice dropped federal corruption charges against him in an apparent effort to win his support for the president's anti-immigration agenda. The current mayor has said he is not beholden to anyone, including the president, while insisting he can develop a working relationship with Trump for the city's benefit. Sliwa, the longshot Republican candidate taking another stab at the mayor's race after losing in 2021, has even urged the president to stay out of the race. 'Every day it's Trump versus Zohran Mamdani, it's a good day for Zohran Mamdani,' Sliwa said in a recent radio interview. 'Every day that Cuomo and Adams talks about you, 'you drop out, you job out,' it's a good day for Zohran Mamdani,' he said. 'The fact is that the president has three candidates in this race,' Mamdani recently told WNYC. 'One that he's directly been in touch with, another that he bailed out of legal trouble and now functionally controls, and the final one literally being a member of the same Republican Party.' Mamdani, a 33-year-old Ugandan-born Democratic socialist, would be the city's first-ever Muslim and Indian American mayor, if elected. He has faced a wave of racist and Islamophobic attacks since securing the Democratic primary, including from Republican members of Congress and the White House. Trump has repeatedly questioned Mamdani's citizenship, falsely branded him a communist, threatened to arrest and deport him, and suggested his administration would 'run' New York City should he win in November. 'I'm not getting involved,' Trump told reporters during a Cabinet meeting last month. 'But I can tell you this. I used to say we will not ever be a socialist country. Well, I'll say it again. We're not gonna have it,' he continued. 'If a communist gets elected to run New York, it can never be the same. But we have tremendous power at the White House to run places where we have to.' While Mamdani touts endorsements from former Cuomo backers and other prominent New York Democrats on his latest tour, the latest Siena Research Institute poll shows the Democratic nominee in the lead with 44 percent of the vote, followed by Cuomo at 25 percent. Sliwa is at 12 percent and Adams is in single digits with 7 percent, the poll found. Mamdani has picked up key endorsements from progressive powerhouses Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, as well as prominent New York Democratic officials like state Attorney General Letitia James and U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler — all of whom are targets of the president and his party. But he has not received any full-throated endorsements from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, as national Democrats fear Mamdani's democratic socialist agenda could be a liability for moderates in a high-stakes race to take back control of Congress in 2026. 'Every seat matters, every race matters, and who is mayor of New York is crucial,' Nadler said. 'New York City needs a leader who won't give Trump an inch, who won't flinch or bargain away our rights.' If elected, Mamdani's fight with the White House would 'be delivered forcefully, rhetorically, through conversations, both public and private,' including staffing up the city's legal departments with dozens of attorneys to push back against Trump threats to send in federal troops, he said. He also argues that his election would also serve as its own signal that the city is fighting back against Trump with 'a governance that is actually characterized by competence and by compassion.'
The Independent
19 minutes ago
- The Independent
Scott Bessent addresses explosive ‘WWE' clash with Elon Musk in West Wing - and if he gave him a black eye
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has addressed reports that he had an explosive argument with Elon Musk in the West Wing earlier this year — and responded to rumors that he gave a black eye to the world's richest man. Bessent clashed with Musk at the end of April over the choices for next leader of the Internal Revenue Service, according to The Atlantic and subsequent media reports. The pair reportedly traded jabs and fired off expletives near the Oval Office. One witness described the fight as 'two billionaire, middle-aged men thinking it was WWE in the hall of the West Wing,' Axios reports. MAGA ally Stephen Bannon even told The Washington Post the pair exchanged blows. Musk rammed his shoulder into Bessent's ribcage 'like a rugby player,' and Bessent hit him back, Bannon recounted. Multiple people then intervened to break up the fight, the Post reported. Weeks later, Musk arrived at the White House with a black eye. Bessent, in a lengthy interview with Bloomberg published Monday, addressed what had happened with Musk but offered few details. He did, however, confirm he didn't give the SpaceX founder a black eye. 'I can 100 percent say I did not give him the black eye,' Bessent said. Musk has also , 'Lil X.' 'I said go ahead and punch me in the face and he did,' the billionaire said. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to a question about the fight in June, explaining she wouldn't have described it as a 'fistfight.' 'It was definitely a moved on from it,' she said.
The Independent
19 minutes ago
- The Independent
Dramatic moment police save man from burning Florida home by dragging him out by his ankles
This is the dramatic moment two police officers enter a smoke -filled home and rescue a trapped man by dragging him out by his ankles. Tampa Police sprang into action when they were called to a fire on the 8400 block of N. Highlands Ave. on Saturday (August 9). Two officers entered the building and found a man in the living room. After initially being overcome with smoke, they re-entered the home and managed to drag the man to safety. Everyone was treated for smoke inhalation but are now doing okay. The fire was deemed to have been started accidentally.
