Vice President JD Vance went “scorched earth” on the legacy news media Monday for refusing to pursue the Jeffrey Epstein story during years while George W. Bush and Barack Obama were presidents.
Now, he explained, since President Donald Trump has ordered the Department of Justice to go “full transparency,” “that’s a criticism” of Trump.
WATCH: A reporter brought up the Epstein Files and VP Vance shut them down and went scorched earth on the media for suddenly pretending to care about the issue and pinning it on President Trump:
“We’re not shielding anything. The President has directed the Attorney General to… pic.twitter.com/huML3wUSW7
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 28, 2025
Trump has ordered the DOJ to release all “credible” information about the sex offender who was convicted but given a light sentence, then died when he was jailed awaiting further charges.
With his remote, private island and his “Lolita Express” airplane there long have been suspicions he actively provided underage girls to a long list of clients, including politicians and celebrities.
Prince Andrew, for example, was caught up in the scandal and ultimately reached a settlement with a woman who accused him of assaulting her when she was underage.
Vance has asked whether the Trump administration was shielding anyone in the investigation, and erupted.
“We’re not shielding anything. The president has directed the attorney general to release all credible information and frankly to go and find additional credible information related to the Jeffrey Epstein case. For four years, under Joe Biden’s Department of Justice, the media didn’t give a damn about the Epstein files or about the Epstein case for literally 20 years. … 20 years, you had Obama and George W. Bush’s Department of Justice go easy on this guy. They didn’t fully investigate the case. … They didn’t show any curiosity about the case. And now Donald J. Trump is asking his Department of Justice to show full transparency. And somehow that’s a criticism of Donald J. Trump and not Barack Obama and George W. Bush.”
The Daily Caller News Foundation said Vance, speaking in Canton, Ohio, noted the absence of any reporter interest in the case for years.
“If you want to criticize the people who aren’t showing full transparency, you ought to go after the administrations that went easy on Jeffrey Epstein, the administrations that concealed this case for 20 years and the administrations that failed to show full transparency,” the vice president said.
Trump has pointed out that if there was any information that would damage him, the administration of Joe Biden would have used it already. “Those files were run by these people, they were run by my enemy. If there was anything in there, they would’ve used them for the election.”