In a bombshell assertion that has sent shockwaves through the Republican Party, House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed that President Donald Trump acted as an “FBI informant” against his former close friend, the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The comment, caught on camera by CNN’s Manu Raju, provides the most inflammatory description to date of Trump’s relationship with the infamous financier and directly implicates the President in the federal child sex trafficking investigation.
“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,” Johnson stated matter-of-factly, attempting to deflect from a growing bipartisan rebellion demanding full transparency on the Epstein case.
In July 2025, Trump said that Epstein poached Virginia Giuffre and other young women from the spa at his Mar-a-Lago resort. Giuffre, who died by suicide in April 2025, testified that Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell recruited her from Mar-a-Lago in 2000, when Giuffre was a teenager.
Trump told New York Magazine in 2002 that Epstein was a “terrific guy,” although he now claims he had a “falling out” with the convicted sex offender in the early 2000s.
If Trump provided information to the FBI, it would imply that he had direct knowledge of Epstein’s illicit conduct, begging the question famously asked in 1973 by Republican Senator Howard Baker Jr.: “What did the President know, and when did he know it?”
Also, if Trump were a snitch, then it would also raise questions about why he hired the former federal prosecutor accused of giving the registered sex offender a ‘sweetheart deal’ as a cabinet official during the first administration.
Alex Acosta, who later served as Labor Secretary under Trump, was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida who arranged a secret non-prosecution agreement that allowed Epstein to avoid federal charges for sex trafficking and instead plead guilty to lesser state-level prostitution charges.
The deal allowed Epstein to serve only 13 months of an 18-month sentence in county jail, with a work-release program that let him leave the facility for up to 16 hours a day. It also granted broad immunity to Epstein and potential co-conspirators, effectively shutting down the ongoing FBI investigation of a man accused of preying on dozens of underage girls..
In 2019, a federal judge ruled that Acosta’s office violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act by failing to notify Epstein’s victims about the plea deal.
Former Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter called the state and federal prosecutors’ handling of the Epstein case “the worst failure of the criminal justice system” in modern times.
The Speaker’s startling characterization of Trump—using the term “informant,” a word synonymous with “snitch” in political and law enforcement circles—stands in stark contrast to the White House’s aggressive efforts to quash the release of the very files that may detail this relationship.
It paints a picture of a man who, despite his current public posture, once cooperated with the very federal agencies he now routinely denounces.
The revelation came as Johnson desperately tried to contain a discharge petition led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) that is just two votes shy of forcing a floor vote to compel the Justice Department to release all its Epstein files. Behind the scenes, the White House is frantically pressuring GOP lawmakers to abandon the effort, with one Trump adviser anonymously warning that anyone who continues to focus on this “will not be received well.”
Johnson, visibly scrambling, dismissed the petition as “totally unfounded” and “not necessary,” insisting the House Oversight Committee’s slower, more controlled investigation was sufficient. Critics were quick to point out that Johnson previously sent lawmakers on vacation early to avoid a vote on this exact issue.
The Speaker’s attempt at damage control only dug a deeper hole. When asked about Trump’s repeated claims that the Epstein scandal is a “hoax,” Johnson performed verbal gymnastics, insisting, “It’s been misrepresented. He’s not saying what Epstein did is a hoax.”
This explanation rings hollow to the survivors of Epstein’s abuse, who stood on Capitol Hill this week and delivered gut-wrenching testimony. They identified Trump not as an informant, but as a featured player in Epstein’s world.
Accuser Chauntae Davies stated plainly, “His biggest brag forever was that he was very good friends with Donald Trump.” She described a framed 8×10 photo of the two men on Epstein’s desk, a trophy of their closeness.
The disconnect between Johnson’s portrayal of a proactive “informant” and the victims’ accounts of a boastful, close friendship raises disturbing new questions.
Why would a man who “ratted out” his friend of a decade keep a photo of them proudly on display? Was Trump’s cooperation with the FBI more extensive than previously known? And most critically, why is the White House, led by a man Johnson claims was trying to “take this stuff down,” now orchestrating a full-scale blockade against transparency?
Epstein described himself as Trump’s “closest friend” and claimed intimate knowledge of his proclivity for sex, including cuckolding his best friends, according to recordings made by author Michael Wolff in August 2017, who was researching his bombshell bestseller Fire and Fury at the time.
Johnson’s office and the White House have refused to comment, leaving his explosive claim hanging over a capital already seething with tension.
With the discharge petition on the brink of success, Johnson has not only failed to stifle the rebellion but has inadvertently poured gasoline on the fire, branding his own president with the one label he fears most: snitch.
While campaigning for the presidency in 2024, Trump reportedly promised to release government files related to the case.
Trump has repeatedly dismissed efforts to release more government documents related to Epstein, calling the transparency push a “Democrat hoax.”
In July 2025, the Justice Department released a memo stating there was no evidence of an Epstein “client list,” but this outraged the MAGA base and intensified calls for transparency.
Documents released in September 2025 by a House committee were found to be mostly records that were already publicly available.
The GOP seems desperate to distract Americans from the files, raising suspicion about what they contain, since we already know Trump was named in them more than 1,000 times, a jury concluded that he raped E. Jean Carroll, and a lawsuit filed by Katie Johnson alleged that Trump raped her at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse in 1994, when she was a 13-year-old aspiring teen model.
Clues about what remains to be seen are found in a three-page catalog of evidence seized during the searches of Epstein’s properties in New York and the U.S. Virgin Islands after his arrest in 2019, and a search of his Palm Beach mansion a dozen years earlier.
A report generated by the FBI lists the evidence inventoried by federal law enforcement during the multiple investigations into his conduct. According to that index, the remaining materials include 40 computers and electronic devices, 26 storage drives, more than 70 CDs, and six recording devices.
The devices hold more than 300 gigabytes of data, according to the DOJ.
The evidence also includes approximately 60 pieces of physical evidence, including photographs, travel logs, employee lists, more than $17,000 in cash, five massage tables, blueprints of Epstein’s island and Manhattan home, four busts of female body parts, a pair of women’s cowboy boots and one stuffed dog, according to the list.
The unreleased evidence notably includes multiple documents related to two islands Epstein owned in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Little Saint James — where his compound was located — and Greater Saint James. According to the index, the files include a folder containing Island blueprints, photographs and other documents.
Some of the documents could shed light on who visited the island. According to the index, the files also include a Little Saint James logbook as well as multiple logs of boat trips to and from the island.
The evidence also includes multiple lists, one vaguely described as a “document with names” and an employee contact list. Investigators also recovered pages of handwritten notes, multiple photo albums, an Austrian passport with Epstein’s photograph and more than a dozen financial documents.