O’Reilly: Trump said ‘a lot of names associated with Epstein’ had nothing to do with his conduct
Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly said he discussed the Jeffrey Epstein case in March with President Trump, who told him that there are “a lot of names associated” with the disgraced financier for innocuous reasons.
“I talked to President Trump, man to man, eye to eye, on St Patrick’s Day about this… And he said — and I agree — ‘there are a lot of names associated with Epstein that had nothing to do with Epstein’s conduct,’” O’Reilly said Wednesday during an appearance on NewsNation’s “CUOMO.”
“They maybe had lunch with them or maybe had some correspondence for one thing or another,” he told host Chris Cuomo.
“If that name gets out,” O’Reilly continued, “those people are destroyed — because there’s not going to be any context. Media doesn’t care about context, so you can’t do that. You can’t destroy a human being by putting out the files, whatever they may be.”
The news veteran argued that, instead, Attorney General Pam Bondi should host a press conference where she addresses the Epstein case head-on and shares with the public everything she can about the case.
“You certainly can have Attorney General Bondi say, this is what we know, and, you know, we’re going to protect the innocent, and he’s a heinous individual,” he said, adding that former Attorney General Merrick Garland — who served in the Biden administration — should sit next to her during the presser.
The interview comes amid fierce backlash from segments of the right-wing media sphere and others after the Justice Department on Monday released a memo concluding the convicted sex offender did not keep any client list used to blackmail high-profile individuals, contradicting conspiracy theories circulating for years that suggested otherwise.
The memo also concluded that Epstein died in 2019 by suicide, refuting other claims that he died under suspicious circumstances.
The Trump administration has pushed back on those claims and has stressed its commitment to truth and transparency.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday that the memo is the result of an “exhaustive review of all of the files related to Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes and his death.”
She noted there was some material that DOJ “did not release because, frankly, it was incredibly graphic and it contained child pornography, which is not something that’s appropriate for public consumption.”
Trump grew exasperated on Tuesday during a Cabinet meeting when a reporter tried to ask Bondi questions about the memo.
“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” the president said. “This guy’s been talked about for years. You’re asking — we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things. And are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable.”
“I mean, I can’t believe you’re asking a question on Epstein at a time like this where we’re having some of the greatest success and also tragedy, with what happened in Texas,” he added. “It just seems like a desecration.”