The Trump administration “mishandled” the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, Vice President JD Vance said on a podcast episode released on Wednesday.
“If people want to say we mishandled the Epstein release, guilty,” Vance told podcaster Joe Rogan. “We did mishandle it, especially the communications of it.”
“I think we should have just dropped everything at the very beginning,” Vance added when asked what the administration should’ve done differently. “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.”
When asked for comment by The Independent, the White House declined to say if President Trump agrees with Vance.
Critics accused the administration of failing to meet early promises to release the files, then slow-walking disclosures that were eventually required under a 2025 law.
The Epstein files are again front and center as Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche faced Congress Wednesday as part of his confirmation process for a full appointment to lead the DOJ.
“There were mistakes that were made,” Blanche said of the release, which included the “herculean task to review millions and millions of potentially responsive files.”
“That doesn’t excuse the mistakes of which I take responsibility but it does mean that we tried to fix them,” he added.
In February of 2025, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi infamously said Epstein’s client list was “sitting on my desk right now,” the same month right-wing influencers were given binders of Epstein information – most of which turned out to already be in the public domain – at the White House.
In July of that year, federal officials changed course, saying there was no client list and announcing that no further disclosures related to Epstein were warranted.
The process set off a bipartisan revolt in the House of Representatives. The congressional campaign culminated in the passage of the 2025 Epstein Files Transparency Act in November, despite President Trump claiming Republicans were “stupid” to join in the push.
As of mid-January, the administration had still only published a few thousand of the more than 2 million documents it was required to by the law’s December 19 deadline, further angering critics.
The Trump administration said the delay was due to privacy considerations for named victims and other sensitive matters within the files.
In March, the DOJ released documents that were initially withheld that included unverified allegations against Donald Trump about an alleged assault in the 1980s. The White House has called those claims baseless and says the accuser is a “disturbed woman.”
Epstein victims, meanwhile, accused the Justice Department in a class-action suit of outing nearly 100 survivors by failing to protect their identities in what was released.
Behind the scenes, the Epstein files also reportedly divided the Trump administration, according to the recently release book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.
The book claims the early 2025 steps around the files caused a major rift between White House figures and then-FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, who later resigned. Regime Change also alleges the Epstein files inspired a Situation Room meting last summer where Vance fretted the scandal would divide the MAGA coalition.
Alex Woodward contributed reporting to this story.
