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Vance: Trump administration ‘screwed up’ Epstein files communication

The Hill

PoliticsThe Hill·Jul 16, 2026·3 min read

Vance: Trump administration ‘screwed up’ Epstein files communication

Vice President Vance on Wednesday said the Trump administration “screwed up” its communications on the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) release of files related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“We absolutely screwed up the comms of the Epstein files,” Vance told Joe Rogan in a nearly three-hour-long podcast interview. “But do I think the reason we screwed up the comms is because we were trying to hide something? No.”

Rogan raised the Epstein files with regard to the notion that President Trump can easily be manipulated. Vance dismissed this and said, “That’s not true, dude.”

The host later said there was a “tremendous amount of resistance to those files being released.”

The vice president pointed at former Attorney General Pam Bondi, who said she had an Epstein “client list” on her desk. Vance noted that this was information that had already been released, prompting Rogan to ask, “what was the purpose of that performative display?”

“I don’t know what the purpose of it was, but I know that the effect of it was to make people mistrust the entire effort,” Vance replied. “And I think, what I think was happening, look, I know Pam. I like Pam. I don’t think there was anything malicious going on.”

He added that he thought Bondi “was trying to respond to the political moment. I think she overstated what we have and didn’t have, and I think that she got roasted for it, publicly by a lot of people, including me. … I’m one of the OG Epstein conspiracy theorists. I’ve probably gone down every single rabbit hole.”

Bondi faced heavy criticism from bipartisan lawmakers on Capitol Hill over the DOJ’s handling of the documents. The files slowly trickled out over the course of a month after a congressionally mandated deadline under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The roll-out included a lot of heavy redactions while some docs openly identified victims, which went against the law.

Vance defended Trump’s reaction to the files. The president initially resisted to support a House effort to require the DOJ to release the files. After the measure passed in the House under a discharge petition and cleared the Senate, he signed it into law.

The president previously had a relationship with Epstein, though the two had a falling out years before Epstein first faced prosecution for his crimes. Critics have suggested that the files contain incriminating information about Trump, something he and his administration have long denied.

“By the way, like do I think there is any –– I’ve never seen a single piece of credible evidence that the President of the United States engaged in wrongdoing with minors ever,” Vance said. “So, like, when the president says, ‘The hoax,’ what he’s talking about is this Democratic idea that he somehow was a pedophile. It’s absurd.”

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee attempted to interview Bondi over her handling of the Epstein files. Last month, the committee released the 111-page transcript of a four-hour-long meeting with Bondi that showed her declining to answer several questions about the files, pointing the finger at acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.