In an attempt to walk back his previous claim that President Donald Trump had been an FBI informant in the case against sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) said that Trump wants to see all the files released. This runs counter to many statements from Trump calling the files’ release “foolish” and that the files themselves are a “hoax.”

On Friday, video of Johnson telling CNN’s Manu Raju that Trump had been an FBI informant in the Epstein case went viral. Over the weekend, Johnson’s office released a statement clarifying that he meant Trump “was the only one more than a decade ago willing to help prosecutors expose Epstein for being a disgusting child predator.”

Mike Johnson claims that his comments about Trump being an FBI informant to take down Epstein have been “common knowledge for a long time”

(This is a lie) pic.twitter.com/SRBV6SJwhR

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 8, 2025

In a new video, Raju asks Johnson again about the claim. Though Johnson said he didn’t know if he “used the right terminology,” the fact that Trump was willing to assist prosecutors and had previously ejected Epstein from Mar-a-Lago was “common knowledge.” Raju asked if Trump had been “asked to wear a wire,” but Johnson said he had no knowledge of that, only that Trump “was helpful in trying to get Epstein for law enforcement.”

READ MORE: Trump Launches Bizarre Epstein Files ‘Scam’ Rant When Asked About Russiagate

“The President and I have talked about the Epstein evils many times. He’s disgusted by it as everybody else. He has long had a history of acknowledging that, and he has said repeatedly he wants everything to come out, all credible information, everything for the American public to decide,” Johnson added.

Despite Johnson’s statement, Trump has had varied reactions to the Epstein files. While many in his orbit said his administration would release the Epstein files in full during his 2024 campaign, Trump himself was less keen on the idea, according to Time. While Trump suggested he may release the files, he also warned of inaccuracies in the data.

In a June 2, 2004 appearance on Fox & Friends, Trump said, “I guess I would [declassify the Epstein files. I think that less so, because you don’t know—you don’t want to  affect people’s lives if there’s phony stuff in there, because there’s a lot of phony stuff in that whole world. But I think I would.”  A few months later, Trump told Lex Fridman that he’d “certainly take a look” at releasing the client list.

On the other hand, Vice President JD Vance, during the campaign told comedian and podcaster Theo Von, “Seriously, we need to release the Epstein list. That is an important thing.” FBI Director Kash Patel also repeatedly called for “ALL of it to be released” during the campaign. Former advisor Elon Musk called for Trump to beat former Vice President Kamala Harris, because if he won “that Epstein client list is going to become public. And some of those billionaires behind Kamala are terrified of that outcome.”

Trump’s own son also demanded the release of the client list during the campaign.

“Everyone knows Bill Clinton was on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane and island a lot. Literally no one is at all surprised that he’s all over the release. What we want to know is ALL THE OTHER NAMES that the government has been hiding & running cover for. That will actually be revealing!” Donald Trump Jr. wrote on X (formerly Twitter) in January 2024.

But after Trump’s election, his administration released a portion of the Epstein files—though most of the files released had already been publicly available. Trump had also dismissed calls from fellow Republicans to release the rest of the files.

“Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullsh*t,’ hook, line, and sinker,” he wrote on Truth Social this July.

Around the same time, he called Republicans still interested in the Epstein files “former supporters” who had been “duped by the Democrats.”

On Monday, Politico reported that the House Oversight Committee had received additional files from the Epstein estate. The committee is led by James Comer (R-Ky.). It is yet unclear what from these latest files will be released publicly and when.

Comer’s fellow Kentucky Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie, has been behind a push to compel the Department of Justice to release all information on Epstein publicly. Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Ca.) say they have the votes to force the DOJ to release the information.

Image via Reuters

Jared Kushner Expected to Be a Top Target

Rep. Elijah Cummings, the Chairman of the powerful House Oversight Committee, has just announced a “wide-ranging investigation” into what he says are “grave breaches of national security at the highest levels of the Trump Administration.” Cummings has sent the White House an 11-page letter informing them of the investigation into how the White House handles classified information.

The focus will be the White House security clearance process, which will include President Donald Trump’s senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner.

NEW: House Oversight and Reform Cmte. Chairman Cummings announces in an 11-page letter to the White House that the cmte., now led by Democrats, will launch “a wide-ranging investigation” into Trump White House and transition team handling of security clearance process. pic.twitter.com/m7n1RsZrVN

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) January 23, 2019

NBC News reports “more than 130 political appointees working in the Executive Office of the President did not have permanent security clearances as of November 2017, including the president’s daughter, son-in-law and his top legal counsel. Son-in-law Jared Kushner has since obtained a clearance, according to his lawyer, despite reports that he has been targeted for manipulation by foreign governments.”

Developing…

Image via Wikimedia

This is a breaking news and developing story. Details may change. This story will be updated, and NCRM will likely publish follow-up stories on this news. Stay tuned and refresh for updates.

Two of the impeachable offenses of which President Donald Trump has been accused — colluding with Russian political interference and working with Michael Cohen to violate campaign finance laws — would directly imply that he was elected as a result of fraud. And according to law professor Michael Glennon of Tufts University, this means that if Trump does get impeached for these alleged high crimes, Vice President Mike Pence must go down as well.

This isn’t just hopeful speculation on Glennon’s part, though it is controversial. He argued in a new Washington Post op-ed that the Constitution should be interpreted to see the vice president and president as a unit when it comes to impeachment based on election fraud.

He noted that, since the time the Constitution’s impeachment provisions were written and ratified, the role of the vice president has been radically altered — particularly because the founding fathers didn’t anticipate the importance of political parties.

“The initial system was designed to select as president and vice president the two individuals most qualified to lead the nation, whatever their political philosophy,” Glennon explained. “It did this by permitting members of the electoral college to cast two votes for the office of president. The individual who received the most votes would be president, and the runner-up, vice president.”

But this led to problems — most notably when Aaron Burr was elected to be Thomas Jefferson’s vice president in 1800 after a fierce campaign.

Glennon said that the 12th Amendment sought to fix this by requiring electors to cast separate ballots for president and vice president. This made unified administrations the most likely electoral outcome, but the change created an overlooked flaw:

Yet the change had critically important — and unnoticed — implications for impeachment. The election of a two-person ticket, rather than an individual, had the potential effect of permitting a vice president and his political party to benefit from electoral fraud by the presidential candidate so long as the vice president himself avoided committing an impeachable offense. A party’s ill-gotten gains — the presidency and all its appointments and prerogatives — would then remain in its hands even though its leader, the president, had been impeached and removed from office. Electoral corruption would still be rewarded.

And punishing election fraud was one of the main purposes of the impeachment provision in the first place, Glennon explained. So, he argued, there is “every reason to believe that after the amendment’s adoption, the Constitution has in this respect continued to mean what it did in 1787: that the presidency ought not be occupied by someone who attains it as the result of a stolen election.”

That means that if Trump’s impeachable crimes helped get him elected, then Pence must be ousted as well. In other words: Say hello to President Nancy Pelosi.

Lawrence Tribe, a Harvard constitutional scholar, was not impressed with this argument.

“This is just wrong as a matter of constitutional law,” he tweeted in response. “There’s a lot to commend Glennon’s reasoning now that vice presidents and presidents are chosen as a team, but as a basis for amending rather than enforcing the Constitution that we currently have.”

While legal scholars debate the constitutional merit of the argument, as a practical matter, observers should recognize that Glennon’s proposed scenario is one of the closest things to a political impossibility that there is. Even assuming that Special Counsel Robert Mueller reveals damning evidence about Trump, it’s still an open question whether enough Republicans in the Senate would ever be willing to vote to remove him.

The idea that Senate Republicans would vote to not only remove Trump but also Pence, thereby making Pelosi president, is even more laughable — especially if the only reason for doing so is a controversial constitutional argument.

Indeed, if we suppose that damning evidence comes out about both Pence and Trump with regard to election-related crimes, this might actually make impeachment less likely, not more. Because if Republicans admitted that Trump’s crimes were impeachable, they’d also have to admit that Pence’s actions were. And that, again, would lead to President Pelosi, a result Senate Republicans absolutely cannot abide. Resistance to the idea of promoting the speaker of the House could force them to excuse both Trump and Pence.

None of this should be taken to diminish Glennon’s well-argued point: Whether the Constitution requires it or not, it does seem perverse to remove a president for election fraud only to leave in place his hand-picked successor. If we have the opportunity to revise the Constitution, fixing this lacuna would be worth considering.