A marathon podcast sit-down turned into a political firestorm this week after Vice President JD Vance made a string of pointed claims about foreign intelligence, wartime influence campaigns, and one of the most notorious scandals in recent American history.
Speaking with Joe Rogan for nearly three hours, Vance alleged that Jeffrey Epstein maintained connections reaching into the top ranks of both American and Israeli intelligence.
He did not walk back Rogan’s suggestion that most Americans already believe Epstein worked on behalf of Mossad.
Pressed further, Vance floated multiple possibilities. He said Epstein could have been tied to Mossad, the CIA, or “some other deep state, whether in America or Israel or another country or both.”
Vance embraced the label of skeptic on the matter, calling himself a “conspiracy theorist” when it comes to Epstein’s true purpose. He suggested that any paper trail connecting Epstein to spy agencies has likely been gone for nearly two decades.
“What I have seen…is that there just wasn’t dispositive evidence. And if that dispositive evidence ever existed, it was probably destroyed after 2006, 2007,” Vance said.
Rogan pushed the theory that Epstein operated as a honey-trap architect, building leverage over the powerful. Vance signaled agreement, though he was careful to separate belief from proof.
“I will go to my deathbed believing there’s a story there,” Vance said, adding that no hidden document exists to settle the matter definitively. “And I promise you there’s not some document, at least that I’m hiding, that allows us to prove exactly what was going on and how.”
Vance did not spare his own administration from criticism. He admitted the rollout of the Epstein files was mismanaged from the start and pointed a finger directly at Attorney General Pam Bondi.
According to Vance, Bondi exaggerated the material she held when she indicated Epstein’s client list was already sitting on her desk. He argued the entire process should have moved faster despite the sensitivity of the records.
“I think we should have just dropped everything at the very beginning and, like I was saying, it takes a little time to review the stuff, to find the stuff, to redact things where you have victims and so forth, but we should have just done it as quickly as possible,” Vance told Rogan.
The vice president also revisited how Epstein first built his fortune and his influence, tracing it back to retail mogul Les Wexner.
Vance theorized that Epstein used aggressive tax strategies to gain a foothold with billionaires, starting with Wexner himself.
Wexner, once the richest man in Ohio and the founder of Victoria’s Secret, handed Epstein sweeping authority over his personal wealth decades ago.
Wexner has consistently maintained he had no knowledge of, or involvement in, Epstein’s crimes.
Turning to geopolitics, Vance noted an odd pattern in Epstein’s Israeli connections.
He observed that Epstein appeared aligned with the left-leaning wing of Israel’s security establishment rather than its right-leaning counterpart, though he admitted the significance of that alignment escaped him.
By comparison, Vance said, Epstein’s American ties were far less ideologically consistent, spanning both Republican and Democratic circles throughout his life.
Beyond Epstein, Vance used the interview to address his own political battles, specifically over his push for a negotiated resolution with Iran.
He cited a Time magazine report that he says exposes a funding pipeline behind attacks on his diplomatic position.
Vance claimed the money moves through a former Trump campaign operative and originates in part from elements tied to the Israeli government. He framed the campaign as a coordinated effort to discredit him personally.
His reaction to those cashing in on the criticism was blunt. “My response to that is, well, go to hell,” Vance said.
Vance additionally claimed that America’s broader sentiment is shifting away from Israel’s position in the ongoing conflict, and that certain figures within the Israeli government are working to prolong the war by shaping U.S. public opinion.
He rejected the anti-Semite label that critics have attached to him, framing his Iran position as a matter of policy rather than prejudice.
