House Speaker Mike Johnson found himself doing cleanup on Monday after comments he made about President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein went viral last week.
On Friday, Johnson told CNN’s Manu Raju that Trump had been an “FBI informant” in efforts to take down the disgraced financier. The remark quickly spread, fueling speculation and debate over Trump’s past ties to Epstein and what role if any he played in federal investigations.
But speaking to reporters on Monday, Johnson admitted he may have misspoken. “I don’t know if I used the right word,” he said. “I said, ‘FBI informant’ but I’m not sure. I wasn’t there this isn’t my lane.”
Instead, Johnson insisted he was only repeating what he called “common knowledge” that Trump was never a hindrance to the Epstein investigation, that he helped law enforcement when asked, and that he was disgusted by Epstein’s behavior. Johnson pointed out that Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago years before the financier was charged with sex trafficking minors and later died in jail in 2019.
“I mentioned that what the attorneys for the victims have been very clear about … he kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago when he learned about this the allegations of just evil behavior, evil acts and that he was assisting, participating in some way, with law enforcement to bring about an end to that,”Johnson said.
The House Speaker, a staunch Trump ally, stressed that he wasn’t trying to give Trump an official FBI designation as an “informant” a term that carries specific legal weight. Instead, he framed his comments as a defense of Trump’s willingness to help investigators.
Still, the slip raised eyebrows, not just because of Trump’s long-documented friendship with Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s, but because of the sensitivity surrounding both men’s names being mentioned together at all.
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