Vice President JD Vance has finally addressed the recent release of files on convicted offender Jeffrey Epstein by the Department of Justice on January 30, 2026. He said the documents revealed the "incestuous nature of America's elites" and defended Trump's involvement in it, saying he was 'outside of the social circle'.
In a Daily Mail interview on February 3, 2026, he also weighed in on other figures connected to the files and called for further congressional action on them. He began by insisting that he would support bipartisan efforts to summon former Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to testify before US lawmakers and Congress, adding that the decision for the same would ultimately be made by congressional Republicans.
He also claimed that the files exonerated Trump, who was friends with the convicted sex offender from the 1990s to the mid-2000s. "President Trump is very much outside of the social circle," Vance insisted.
While acknowledging Trump's wealth and power which was similar to the people associated with the files, he added "He knows a lot of these people. He certainly has similar wealth and power. But he never really was friendly with Epstein in a way that a lot of these other people were." As per Trump, he fell out with Epstein over his 'creepy' behaviour toward young women at his Mar-a-Lago club.
"I think that it just shows there's an incestuous nature to America's elites, and it's pretty gross. And, a lot of people, I think, it reflects very poorly on them. Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, a lot of others."
This marks Vance's first comments on the Epstein files after their release. The Vice President who had not been away from X for more than 48 hours, stopped posting on the social media platform from January 28, just two days before they were set to be released.
Before joining the presidential ticket and staunchly defending Trump over the infamous files, Vance was once a huge proponent of conspiracy theories. "Remember when we learned that our wealthiest and most powerful people were connected to a guy who ran a literal child sex trafficking ring? And then that guy died mysteriously in jail? And now we just don't talk about it," he wrote in an X post in 2021.
