Mike Johnson Clarifies Claim That Trump Was 'FBI Informant' Against Epstein

WASHINGTON ― House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Monday essentially recanted his claim that President Donald Trump served as an FBI informant against his former friend Jeffrey Epstein.

“He was willing to help law enforcement go after this guy who was a disgusting child abuser, sex trafficker,” Johnson told reporters at the Capitol on Monday. “I don’t know if I use the right terminology, but that’s common knowledge.”

Indeed, Johnson was probably not using the right terminology.

Johnson had said Friday that Trump served as “an FBI informant” on Epstein in the course of struggling to explain away Trump’s claim that the Epstein story is a “Democrat hoax,” a phrase Trump repeated last week even as victims of Epstein’s crimes told their stories on Capitol Hill.

“He’s not saying that what Epstein did is a hoax. It’s a terrible, unspeakable evil. He believes that himself,” Johnson said Friday. “When he first heard the rumor, he kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago. He was an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down. The president knows and has great sympathy for the women who have suffered these unspeakable harms.”

Trump and Epstein were friends, photographed together repeatedly, until some sort of falling out around 2004. The White House said this summer that Trump dismissed Epstein from his Florida club for being a “creep.” The president himself then said he banished Epstein after Epstein poached young staff from Mar-a-Lago. Epstein was first arrested for soliciting prostitutes in 2006; he received a sweetheart nonprosecution deal from federal prosecutors but was eventually indicted on federal sex trafficking charges in 2019. He killed himself in prison that year.

Trump administration officials said they would release the government’s investigative files on the late sex trafficker, only to change their minds in July and announce no new information would be released. Now the administration is funneling some material to Capitol Hill in response to a subpoena as Johnson tries to fight off an effort by rank-and-file lawmakers to force a House vote on legislation requiring the Epstein files to be made public in a searchable database.

Johnson on Monday suggested his “FBI informant” claim was just a mix-up, and that he was actually just trying to describe Trump’s informal assistance to the attorneys representing some of Epstein’s victims.

“President Trump, back in 2009 and several times after that, he didn’t think it was a hoax then,” one of the attorneys, Brad Edwards, said at the press conference last week. “In fact, he helped me, he got on the phone, he told me things that were helping our investigation. Now, our investigation wasn’t looking into him, but he was helping us then. He didn’t treat this as a hoax.”

Asked if he knew anything about Trump assisting a federal investigation, Johnson said he had “no information about that whatsoever.”

FBI informants, or confidential human sources, are typically people with inside information about crimes or unsavory activities who provide tips to the government. They may receive money or assistance negotiating with prosecutors in their own cases.

“They may be involved in criminal activities or enterprises themselves, may be recruited by the FBI because of their access and status, and, since they will not testify in court, usually can preserve their anonymity,” says a 2005 report on confidential informants by the Justice Department inspector general.