House Speaker Mike Johnson is walking back his initial claim that Donald Trump was an “FBI informant” in the case against Jeffrey Epstein. The comment, which Johnson made last week to reporters on Capitol Hill, was a stunning assertion that raised a lot of logical questions. Now, Johnson’s office has released a statement that rephrases the president’s supposed involvement, changing the narrative from a formal relationship with the FBI to simply being “willing to help prosecutors.”
When Johnson first made his claim, he was defending Donald Trump’s remarks about the ongoing release of Epstein documents being a “Democrat hoax”. Johnson clarified that what Trump was actually calling a hoax was the idea that Democrats were using the case to attack him, not what Epstein did. It’s a “terrible, unspeakable evil,” Johnson said, adding that Trump himself believes this. To support this, Johnson then said that Trump was “an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down”.
According to The Washington Post, Johnson claimed that Trump had cooperated with federal authorities for years, ever since he kicked Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club after hearing rumors about him. It’s the first time any official has made such a claim. However, we’re moving from Trump actively helping the FBI, which explains the connection, to now being forced to do so due to his previous ties with Epstein, which are two very different reasons.
In an unsurprising twist, Trump was not an informant for the FBI
Johnson’s initial comments were met with confusion and skepticism, with even Republican Representative Thomas Massie asking, “If [the Epstein scandal is] a ‘hoax,’ why was Donald Trump an informant to a hoax?“. That’s a fair point. Being an informant implies a formal, ongoing relationship with the FBI. The new statement from Johnson’s office clarifies that the Speaker was “reiterating what the victims’ attorney said”.
The new statement adds, “Donald Trump… was the only one more than a decade ago willing to help prosecutors expose Epstein for being a disgusting child predator”. This second claim comes after an attorney for several of Epstein’s victims, Brad Edwards, told reporters that Trump helped him with his investigation into Epstein back in 2009. Edwards, however, did not say whether Trump had ever cooperated with law enforcement, but only that he was “friendly” to the victims’ plight at the time.
in which Mike Johnson claims that Donald Trump was an FBI informant to take down Epstein pic.twitter.com/fe2WvhNDS2
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 5, 2025
This whole situation comes as a bill called the Epstein Files Transparency Act is still on the table. This bill would compel the administration to release more documents related to the Epstein case. Johnson has refused to bring the bill to the floor, but a bipartisan discharge petition, led by Massie and Democratic Representative Ro Khanna, is still seeking signatures to force a vote.
It is strange that Trump would be so against releasing information on Epstein if he really did nothing wrong. Luckily, the bill would require the Attorney General to make all unclassified documents related to Epstein publicly available within 30 days of the act’s enactment.
