Karoline Leavitt shoots down Mike Johnson’s claim Trump was FBI informant against Epstein
WASHINGTON, DC: White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday, September 9, firmly rejected House Speaker Mike Johnson’s startling suggestion that President Donald Trump once acted as an FBI informant to take down financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Johnson made the claim in an interview with CNN’s Manu Raju, when he was asked about Trump’s past ties to the disgraced financier.
Although Trump has acknowledged knowing Epstein years ago, he has long dismissed any deeper connection as a “hoax.” Johnson, however, told Raju that Trump’s friendship with Epstein was part of a covert federal operation.
Trump was not an FBI informant on Jeffrey Epstein
At White House briefing, Leavitt dismissed the claim when pressed about Johnson’s remarks. “I can affirm that is not true. I think the Speaker was referring to the fact that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago property for reasons the president has already discussed,” she said, making clear that Trump never served as an FBI operative.
Trump continues to face calls from both Democrats and some Republicans to release more information about Epstein. Several Democratic lawmakers have speculated that Trump’s prior ties to the late financier raise questions about what he may be withholding.
Leavitt stressed that Johnson’s claim had no factual basis. The dispute came as Congress released a handwritten note said to be a birthday greeting from Trump to Epstein, complete with a sketch of a nude woman. Leavitt reinforced the denial, saying: “The president did not write the letter.”
These are his initial comments from last week that got a lot of attention that the speaker was responding to. Said today that all the fuss was “much ado about nothing.”
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) September 8, 2025
This is what he said to me on Thursday: pic.twitter.com/NzUNCCcfU9
Speaking with CNN, Johnson claimed Trump “was an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down,” referencing the president’s falling out with Epstein nearly two decades ago.
Karoline Leavitt accuses critics of exploiting victims
Leavitt accused Trump’s opponents of “pretending to care about victims of crime” while ignoring broader child exploitation issues.
“They do not care about victims of crime when they have done nothing to solve crimes, when they have done nothing to lock up child pedophiles and child r*pists across the country,” Leavitt said, dismissing renewed scrutiny as political theater.
When asked if Trump would meet survivors of Epstein’s s*x trafficking network following newly unsealed congressional files, Leavitt declined to give a direct answer.
She also rejected the authenticity of the materials, insisting that both the greeting and the signatures were fabricated. “The Democrats view this story as nothing more than an attempt to distract from the accomplishments and the achievements of this administration, and that is what we mean when we call it a hoax,” she said.
