DAILY MAIL
President Donald Trump directly ordered the cover-up of the government’s Jeffrey Epstein files, ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed in a stunning interview.
Speaking with Vanity Fair, Carlson, 57, said that he warned the president about the political ramifications of withholding the files in the summer of 2025 when Trump was facing overwhelming scrutiny for his administration’s handling of the late pedophile’s files.
‘My position from the beginning with Trump, I said it to Trump, was, ‘I don’t understand why you would ever keep any of this stuff secret.’ And I got like a bunch of different answers,’ Carlson told the outlet.
‘I don’t feel any need to cover for Epstein,’ the pundit and podcaster said, recounting his conversation with the president. ‘So I said, ‘You shouldn’t either.’ In the end, it came from Trump directly.’
Though a deluge of reports has detailed the West Wing’s reaction to the Epstein fallout, including meetings on the topic in the Situation Room, Carlson is the first to claim the order to throttle the release of the files came from Trump.
‘The order to cover it up came from Trump,’ the former Fox News host said. ‘I asked him why. And he gave me this long, very emotional explanation that this was all a plot against him, like Russiagate.’
Responding to Carlson’s claims, the White House did not directly deny the account, but noted how Trump has ‘been totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein’ and that he has done more for the pedophile’s victims ‘than anyone before.’
The ex-Fox Newser-turned-podcaster has done a complete U-turn on his support for the Republican president in the last year, bashing him for the Epstein saga, the Iran war and for not being a true ‘America first’ conservative.