Vance Tells Joe Rogan Epstein Had Ties to 'Israeli Deep State' and US Intelligence, No Evidence Offered

Vice President JD Vance sat down with Joe Rogan for a three-hour interview released Wednesday, July 15, and used it to go further than he ever has on Jeffrey Epstein's alleged intelligence ties. He also admitted, in the same breath, that the Trump administration botched the rollout of the Epstein files.

"He clearly had connections to the upper, the highest levels of American intelligence. He clearly had connections to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence," Vance told Rogan, according to Anadolu Agency. Asked directly whether Epstein was tied to Mossad, Vance said, "Yeah, Mossad or CIA or some other deep state, whether in America, Israel, or another country."

Vance then narrowed the claim in a way nobody in his administration has said publicly before. "Epstein seemed to be connected to the elements of the Israeli deep state that were left of center," he said, adding that Epstein "wasn't super connected to the right of center of Israeli politics." He drew a contrast with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calling him "not a particularly popular person in the United States of America right now."

Epstein had a well-documented friendship with Ehud Barak, Israel's former prime minister and a figure on the Israeli center-left, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA). Barak has acknowledged the relationship and said he regrets it, but has denied any wrongdoing. That's a real, sourced connection.

No evidence supports the claim that Epstein worked for Mossad or any intelligence service, per JTA. Naftali Bennett, another former Israeli prime minister, publicly denied last year that Epstein had any relationship with Israeli intelligence. Vance himself hedged repeatedly, saying "I don't know what that means" about Epstein's deeper ties to Israel's political left than its right.

Vance is a sitting vice president making unverified claims about a foreign intelligence service on one of the most-listened-to podcasts in the country. JTA flagged that theories about Epstein and Israeli intelligence "have proliferated in the years since his death and often have veered into antisemitism." That's a fair concern, and it deserves to be stated plainly rather than dismissed. Vance's comments don't cross into an explicit antisemitic claim on their face, but tying an alleged intelligence conspiracy specifically to the "left of center" of Israeli politics, while separately floating that Epstein was doing off-the-books "tax stuff" for billionaire Les Wexner as a possible blackmail mechanism, invites exactly the kind of speculation JTA describes.

On the flip side, the strongest good-faith read of Vance's remarks is that he's reacting to years of unanswered questions about how Epstein financed his lifestyle and who protected him, not making an accusation against Jews as a group. Vance explicitly said he doesn't know what the pattern means. He's speculating in public, which is a different thing than asserting a proven conspiracy.

Vance also broke from the administration's usual defensive posture on the Epstein files. "If people want to say we mishandled the Epstein release, guilty. We did mishandle, especially the communications of it," he told Rogan, according to Anadolu Agency. "We absolutely screwed up the comms of the Epstein files." He said the administration should have "just dropped everything at the very beginning" rather than dragging out the review process, while acknowledging redactions for victims take time.

That admission lands against the backdrop of the Justice Department's release, in January, of more than 3 million pages, 2,000 videos and 180,000 images under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law last November. The rollout was messy and slow, and Vance is now the highest-ranking official to say so on the record.

The political fallout is already visible. According to a report from the South African Jewish Report citing JTA reporting, Jewish Republicans have soured on Vance over his handling of Israel-related rhetoric, his "indulgence of anti-Israel conspiracy theories," and his silence on Tucker Carlson's turn against Israel. Shabbos Kestenbaum, a prominent conservative activist against campus antisemitism, told JTA that support among "American Jewish MAGA voters, donors, and policymakers" is shifting hard toward Secretary of State Marco Rubio for 2028, putting the margin at "99 to 1" in Rubio's favor within those circles.

Rubio has leaned into that lane, vowing this week to dismantle the International Criminal Court over its warrants against Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders, a move the Republican Jewish Coalition publicly thanked him for on social media. Whether Vance's Rogan comments accelerate that shift inside the party, or whether Trump's own eventual endorsement in the 2028 primary overrides it, remains an open question with no clear answer yet.