Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson insinuated that Jeffrey Epstein was working for Israeli intelligence services in a Friday address at a Turning Point USA event.
“It’s extremely obvious to anyone who watches that this guy had direct connections to a foreign government. No one’s allowed to say that that foreign government is Israel, because we have been somehow cowed into thinking that’s naughty,” he said at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit in Tampa, Florida.
He then went on to assert his claim, adding that: “There’s nothing antisemitic about saying that. There’s nothing even anti-Israel about saying that.”
In the speech, Carlson questioned whether or not Epstein was blackmailing people on behalf of the Mossad. He also questioned where Epstein’s wealth and career came from.
“The real question is not ‘Was Jeffrey Epstein a weirdo who was abusing girls?’ The real question is why was he doing this, on whose behalf, and where did the money come from,” Carlson said.
“I think the real answer is Jeffrey Epstein was working on behalf of intel services, probably not American. We have every right to ask on whose behalf he was working.”
In the speech, he compared his assertion of Epstein’s ties to Israel to his belief that the CIA killed former president John F. Kennedy, adding that this didn’t make him “anti-American.”
“Criticizing the behavior of a government agency doesn’t make you a hater; it makes you a free person. You have a right to demand that foreign governments not be allowed to act against your interests.”
He argued that this caused a large degree of hate online, where people felt like it was politically incorrect to question Epstein’s actions.
“People like they can’t say ‘What the hell is this? You have the former Israeli prime minister living in your house, you’ve had all this contact with a foreign government. Were you working on behalf of Mossad? Were you running a blackmail operation on behalf of a foreign government?'”
He told the crowd that “every single person in Washington, DC, thinks that.
“I’ve never met anyone that doesn’t think that. I don’t know any of them that hate Israel.”
Carlson argued that because people felt they weren’t allowed to talk about this case, the conversation got weirder.
“I think it’s better just to say it right out loud: Did this happen?” he said. “Of course, that question has been asked to the government of Israel, and their answer is ‘we’re not gonna tell you.’”
Carlson said that if the US continues to financially support Israel, then citizens “have a right to know” if the Mossad was committing crimes in the US.
“Everybody has been so brainwashed into thinking that’s somehow an expression of hate or bigotry, when it’s not.”
He said that he believed more information would come out about the Epstein case, even though the Justice Department announced that it would not be releasing more information to the public.
US Justice Department releases memo on Epstein
His speech comes after the US Justice Department said in a memo that it had found that Epstein died by suicide, and that he did not keep a “client list” to blackmail other individuals involved in his sex trafficking scheme with underage girls.
“There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties,” the Monday memo read.
Trump supporters accused US Attorney-General Pam Bondi of withholding information on the case from the public.
However, one Trump administration official told CNN that she had “bungled the case from the start” by overpromising federal results on bombshell evidence, but delivering documents that were already public.
The Justice Department could not release many of its findings under federal law in order to protect Epstein’s numerous victims.
Carlson argued that the original search warrant was designed to protect Epstein, which is why the government did not release damming bombshell evidence.
“The search warrant was written in such a way to make sure that the feds never got their hands on the actually incriminating evidence,” he said. “The coverup has been going on since 2007, almost 20 years.”