JD Vance says Epstein had connections to CIA and Mossad
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Oscar Rickett
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Thu, 07/16/2026 - 11:59
US vice president tells podcaster Joe Rogan of an 'extremely well-funded' Israel-linked campaign to derail Iran talks
US Vice President JD Vance speaks at This is the Turning Point Tour at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, on 14 April 2026 (Reuters)
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The paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein was connected to the “highest levels” of US and Israeli intelligence, JD Vance said on Monday.
“He clearly had connections to the upper, the highest levels of American intelligence,” the US vice president told podcaster Joe Rogan, in relation to Epstein. “He clearly had connections to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence.”
Told by Rogan that “most people think he was Mossad”, Israel's external intelligence agency, Vance replied: “Mossad or CIA or some other deep state, whether in America or Israel or some other country… or both.”
The vice president, who describes himself as “an OG Epstein conspiracy theorist”, said that Epstein’s connections were to “elements of the Israeli deep state that were left of centre”, most notably former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
“It wasn’t like he was super connected to the right of centre of Israeli politics,” Vance said.
There has been much speculation about whether Epstein was working for Israeli, US or even Russian intelligence.
The convicted sex offender, who hosted a large number of rich and powerful people on his private island and was connected to former US President Bill Clinton, pro-Israel billionaire Les Wexner, British politician Peter Mandelson and Queen Elizabeth’s son Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, appeared to have accumulated a vast amount of compromising information over many years.
Asked earlier this year whether they considered Epstein to have been a Mossad asset, an adviser to the Indian government told Middle East Eye: “100 percent”.
There is, though, no categorical proof that Epstein worked actively for an intelligence agency.
The Epstein files do, however, document the financier’s funding of Israeli groups, including Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, and the settler organisation the Jewish National Fund, as well as his ties to members of Israel’s overseas intelligence services.
An FBI memo produced by the bureau’s Los Angeles field office in October 2020 reported that one of its sources had come to believe Epstein “was a co-opted Mossad agent”.
According to the document, the disgraced paedophile was described as having been “trained as a spy” for Israel’s intelligence service.
Israel-backed campaign to derail US-Iran deal
In his interview with Rogan, Vance – who appeared to be positioning himself as a successor to Donald Trump and a presidential candidate in 2028 – described a “very discreet, extremely well-funded campaign to try to derail the negotiation and try to derail the deal” with Iran.
Vance has spearheaded negotiations with Iran, resulting in the memorandum of understanding signed by the two countries last month. The deal has fallen apart and the US and Iran are once more exchanging strikes.
“There are certain influencers in America who are being paid in order to attack the deal,” he said, mentioning funding that came from Israel.
The vice president referenced a Time magazine article this week which details an “Israeli influence operation targeting the MAGA base”. Brad Parscale, a digital adviser on Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign, is reportedly being paid $1.5m a month to run this operation.
According to Vance, the Time article “lists a bunch of people who have quite literally been paid by a former Trump campaign person, who is himself paid by certain elements within the Israeli government, and those people are attacking me quite viciously.
“I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there have been people within the Israeli government who are trying to, like, actually shift us away from that policy [the Iran negotiations] because they want to continue the military campaign,” Vance said.
The vice president said that there are people "who are super-hawkish in the American system who have attacked the deal and, frankly, in some ways tried to derail the deal. And what I always say to those people is, what is your proposal?"
Vance described himself as “the reasonable moderate” in “this massive pro-Israel, anti-Israel debate in the United States of America". He said he had been widely accused of being an antisemite, “which is insane”.
When asked if he thought the US would have engaged in the most recent war with Iran were it not for Israeli influence, Vance said, “Yes, yes I do.”
“I think the president, separate from any influence from Israel, believes very strongly, and again I agree with this, that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon,” Vance said.
“The idea that Donald Trump is being blackmailed is crazy to me,” he said, when asked by Rogan if Israel was using the Epstein files – or some other compromising information – to get Trump to do what it wanted.
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