Vice President JD Vance has conceded that the Trump administration “mishandled” the release of files relating to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In an episode of the Joe Rogan podcast released on Wednesday, Vance said: “If people want to say we mishandled the Epstein release, guilty. We did mishandle it, especially the communications of it.”
Asked what the administration should have done differently, Vance replied: “I think we should have just dropped everything at the very beginning. Obviously, it takes a little time to review the stuff, to find the stuff, to redact things where you have victims and so forth, but we should have just done it as quickly as possible.” The White House declined to comment on whether President Trump agrees with Vance's assessment.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, appearing before Congress as part of his confirmation process, also acknowledged mistakes. “There were mistakes that were made,” he said, describing the process as a “herculean task to review millions and millions of potentially responsive files.” He added: “That doesn’t excuse the mistakes of which I take responsibility but it does mean that we tried to fix them.”
The release of Epstein-related documents has been contentious since February 2025, when then-Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed that Epstein’s client list was “sitting on my desk right now.” The same month, right-wing influencers were given binders of Epstein information at the White House, most of which was already public. In July, officials reversed course, stating there was no client list and that no further disclosures were warranted. This prompted a bipartisan revolt in the House, leading to the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November 2025, which mandated the release of over two million documents.
By mid-January, the administration had published only a few thousand documents, missing the December 19 deadline. Officials cited privacy concerns for victims. The Justice Department later released files containing unverified allegations against Donald Trump, which the White House dismissed as baseless. Epstein victims have filed a class-action suit, accusing the department of exposing nearly 100 survivors by failing to protect their identities.
A newly released book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, claims the Epstein files caused a rift within the administration, with Vance reportedly expressing concern that the scandal could divide the MAGA coalition.
