Donald Trump was an FBI informant on convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, a senior Republican has claimed.
Mike Johnson also told CNN that Trump thought what Epstein did was a “terrible, unspeakable evil” and that the US president had been “misrepresented” throughout the controversy over the files during his second term.
Mr Johnson’s comments come after months of speculation regarding a “client list” that Attorney General Pam Bondi said in February was sitting on her desk.
The Wall Street Journal later reported that Ms Bondi had informed Mr Trump that his name had appeared several times on the list, which is understood to have included names of influential figures associated with the sex offender.
Epstein was found dead in his cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on a number of sex-trafficking charges. His death was ruled as a suicide but has prompted countless conspiracy theories and public scepticism.
Trump had initially been friends with Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s and has been pictured with the disgraced financier, but severed ties with him after an argument at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
“What Trump is referring to is the hoax that the Democrats are using to try to attack him,” Mr Johnson said.
“I’ve talked to him about this many times, many times. He is horrified. It’s been misrepresented. He’s not saying that what Epstein did is a hoax. It’s a terrible, unspeakable evil. He believes that himself.”
Mr Johnson added: “When he first heard the rumour, he kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago. He was an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down.”
The controversy has divided the Maga camp, with even loyal supporters of the president including Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson calling for greater transparency.
Republican Thomas Massie, of Kentucky, and Democrat Ro Khanna, of California, are also campaigning for a “discharge petition” in the House of Representatives that would force a vote on publicly releasing the entirety of the government’s Epstein case information.
On Wednesday, a group of Epstein victims and their families held a press conference to support the discharge petition, intensifying the pressure on the White House.
Meanwhile, the Department of Justice has said it has found no evidence of a client list that was kept by the paedophile.
In previous years, Mr Trump has speculated that it was possible Epstein had been murdered, and called for a full investigation in 2019.
However, last week he described it as a hoax, saying: “From what I understand, I could check, but from what I understand, thousands of pages of documents have been given. But it’s really a Democrat hoax because they’re trying to get people to talk about something that’s totally irrelevant to the success that we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president.”
