Jeffrey Epstein’s attorney has shredded Tucker Carlson for pushing the narrative that Israeli intelligence had something to do with the late financier’s crimes.
“I don’t believe there was a client list. I don’t believe Jeffrey Epstein planned to blackmail anyone. I don’t believe Jeffrey Epstein was in the employ of Mossad, or any other intelligence agency, or any of these crazy Tucker Carlson theories that are going around,” lawyer David Schoen told CNN Monday.
Epstein’s crimes have exploded back into public discourse over the past week and a half after the Department of Justice and FBI issued a memo announcing they’d found no evidence the convicted sex trafficker kept a “client list” of uber-wealthy co-conspirators, and that his 2019 death in police custody was a suicide.
Donald Trump has long wooed right-wing conspiracy theorists who believe Epstein was merely a single player in a far more expansive pedophile ring, and that his death had been orchestrated so as to prevent his accomplices’ crimes from coming to light.
Given his repeated pledges on the campaign trail to release previously unknown details of the late financier’s activities, that courtship has now spectacularly backfired, sparking a MAGA civil war with leading far-right influencers like Laura Loomer calling for Attorney General Pam Bondi’s head to roll over the DoJ’s findings, and Trump supporters posting videos of themselves burning their iconic MAGA hats in protest over the administration’s handling of the case.
Schoen’s comments come after Carlson, the former Fox News host who is one of the most prominent ‘Epstein Truthers’, told the crowds at a MAGA rally in Florida last Friday that the “real question” is not whether Epstein was a “weirdo,” but rather “where was the money coming from?”
“I think the real answer is Jeffrey Epstein was working on behalf of intel services, probably not American,” he added. “That foreign government is Israel.”
Carlson’s accusations prompted immediate backlash from the Israeli politician Naftali Bennett. “As a former Israeli Prime Minister, with the Mossad having reported directly to me, I say to you with 100% certainty: the accusation that Jeffrey Epstein somehow worked for Israel or the Mossad running a blackmail ring is categorically and totally false,” Bennett tweeted.
Bennett further called Carlson out by name, calling the accusations a “lie being peddled by prominent online personalities” who were “pretending to know things they don’t,” and that their “lies stick, because it’s Israel.”
Meanwhile Trump’s efforts to quell the carnage, whether through outbursts of frustration in Cabinet meetings or virulent posts on Truth Social about how he doesn’t “like what’s happening,” have been to little avail—with Trump’s own relationship with Epstein under renewed scrutiny.
Speaking with CNN, Schoen told the network he’s does not believe the president had anything to do with the sex trafficker’s crimes, having asked Epstein himself in the weeks and months before his death.
“He said absolutely not. It was an important issue for him,” the lawyer explained. “It was important to him people not cast aspersions on Donald Trump, and others who we spoke about, by wrongly associating him with any of his activities.”
Epstein’s attorney was also at pains to stress that, contrary to rumours long cherished by the far right and fuelled by Trump himself, he doesn’t believe the disgraced financier even kept a “client list” of any description, noting “Epstein ran with a lot of famous and wealthy people,” and that “the fact they might appear in an address book doesn’t mean they did anything nefarious.”
Asked why, then, AG Bondi told Fox News that the list not only existed, but was simply “sitting on my desk” awaiting review earlier in February, Schoen clarified that he suspects the nation’s top prosecutor simply misspoke.
“I think what she meant was that she had a client list on her desk that she was reviewing,” he explained. “The position now is they reviewed the file, there’s no smoking gun, there’s no blackmail, and so on.”
What dribble of cold water his comments might have served to pour on MAGA’s gathering fury over the controversy, however, was almost immediately undercut when he shared his thoughts on the circumstances surrounding his client’s 2019 death.
“They also came to the conclusion that he committed suicide—I don’t happen to believe that,” he said, adding, “I can’t prove it and they can’t prove it,” but that the financier had been actively engaged in his defense in the days leading up to his death and the medical examiners who’d carried out the autopsy had said his injuries were inconsistent with suicide.
Schoen’s last point is not correct. While the Justice Department did eventually release a report suggesting a combination of negligence and misconduct by jail staff had created an environment that contributed to Epstein’s death, a New York medical examiner nevertheless determined that it was indeed a suicide, with the FBI further adding there was no indication it had been the result of a criminal act.
Whether those details, or any of the other actual facts of the case, will have any bearing at all on the rapidly deepening civil war within MAGA ranks caused by the DoJ and FBI memo remains an open question.
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