JD Vance has alleged that he is being targeted by an Israeli-funded propaganda effort over his push for peace with Iran, while also claiming that Jeffrey Epstein had connections reaching the “highest levels” of Mossad.
The Vice President made the striking claims during an almost three-hour interview with Joe Rogan on the podcaster’s widely followed show.
Vance cited a Time magazine report that he said showed American influencers were being paid to criticize the Iran deal. According to the report, funding has moved through a former Trump campaign operative and is backed by elements within the Israeli government.
“My response to that is, well, go to hell,” Vance said, referring to people he accused of taking money to smear him. He also complained that he has been labeled an anti-Semite and argued that Israel is losing the battle for public opinion in the United States.
Vance went further, saying that “figures” within the Israeli government are seeking to shape American public opinion in order to keep the war going “indefinitely.”
The conversation later turned to the administration’s handling of the Epstein scandal. Vance said the disgraced financier “clearly had connections to the highest levels of American intelligence” as well as “Israeli intelligence.”
When Rogan remarked that many people believe Epstein was working for Mossad, Vance did not push back. Instead, he said it could have been Mossad, “or CIA or some other deep state, whether in America or Israel or another country or both.”
Vance, describing himself as a “conspiracy theorist” on the Epstein case, said he believed any material connecting Epstein to intelligence agencies was likely destroyed after 2006, the year the financier was first arrested.
JD Vance says he’s the target of an Israeli-funded influence campaign over his Iran peace push, and that Jeffrey Epstein was tied to the ‘highest levels’ of Mossad
Vance told Joe Rogan that Epstein ‘clearly had connections to the upper the highest levels of American intelligence’ and ‘Israeli intelligence’
Vance, who complained he has been branded an anti-Semite, declared that Israel is losing the public opinion battle in America
‘What I have seen…is that there just wasn’t dispositive evidence. And if that dispositive evidence ever existed, it was probably destroyed after 2006, 2007,’ Vance told Rogan.
On Epstein, the vice president agreed with Rogan that the financier was running an operation to pressure or compromise powerful people.
‘I will go to my deathbed believing there’s a story there,’ Vance said, though he admitted he cannot prove it.
‘And I promise you there’s not some document, at least that I’m hiding, that allows us to prove exactly what was going on and how.’
He conceded the administration ‘absolutely screwed up’ its handling of the files.
Vance pinned much of the botched Epstein files rollout on Attorney General Pam Bondi, saying she ‘overstated what we had’ when she claimed Epstein’s client list was sitting on her desk.
‘I think we should have just dropped everything at the very beginning and, like I was saying, 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,’ he told Rogan.
Vance then floated his own theory that Epstein gained leverage over billionaires by crafting shady tax schemes for men like his original patron Les Wexner.
Les Wesner is a billionare who had longstanding ties with Epstein
Vance conceded the administration ‘absolutely screwed up’ its handling of the files
Wexner, the Victoria’s Secret billionaire and once Ohio’s richest man, was Epstein’s first major client and handed him sweeping control of his personal fortune.
Vance said he found it fascinating that Epstein was plugged into the left-of-center faction of the Israeli deep state rather than its right wing, admitting: ‘I don’t know what that means.’
He noted that in America, by contrast, the financier cultivated friends across the entire political spectrum from Republicans to Democrats.
