Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk on Thursday criticized elements of President Donald Trump’s administration for how it released information related to deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Axios reported on Sunday that a two-page memo showed the Department Of Justice (DOJ) and FBI found no evidence Epstein maintained a “client list” or was murdered, but public skepticism has persisted. Kirk said on “The Charlie Kirk Show” that the Trump administration wanted to kill the story by leaking the memo on July 4 weekend, but it has only gained traction.
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“I learned a lot this week. I learned how you don’t handle PR when it comes to a story that is as complex, as sensitive, as high profile as the Epstein thing. It started on a Sunday night,” Kirk said. “The whole thing was so perplexing to me because you sign the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ on Independence Day, and then on a holiday weekend, going into a news week, you decide to leak it to Axios that it’s like, ‘Case closed, don’t ask any questions, there is no list.’”
“Trust me, I don’t want to talk about Epstein every single day. But it’s been very interesting because this week — sometimes news stories go away. Sometimes news stories kind of you have a one-day cycle,” he continued. “This is a rare occurrence where the news story is actually getting bigger. Sometimes they have legs … it’s not just the online right. And it’s as if something just happened last evening or yesterday afternoon. I was starting to get texts from people that are not necessarily politicos.”
Kirk said the story expanded to the point where it “has been building to a crescendo” in a 48-hour span. He said a key aspect of Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement is requiring government “transparency” after past dishonesty.
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“We were lied to about so many different things that we want to try to rebuild trust in our government. What’s been very interesting and instructive to me is that this is not only a young online libertarian transparency push,” he said. “Instead, this seems like it’s spanning multiple generations. And you in this audience have been emailing me freedom@charliekirk.com, very ticked off and very confused. And this is going to be a testing moment for all of us.”
Trump administration officials admitted to the Daily Caller that they are upset with the handling of the investigation into the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said, “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review” during a February Fox News interview in response to a question about an Epstein client list.
Officials told the Caller that they are frustrated and feel as though the DOJ erred by over-representing the amount of evidence it had to expose Epstein’s alleged child trafficking ring.
“You can arrest all the drug leaders and cartel leaders, but people want closure on this case, and the Attorney General must find a better way to reconcile that,” one official told the Caller about the public response to the memo.
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Officials also expressed confusion about whether the Epstein case was truly “closed” following the memo. One source said it read like the case was closed, but noted that there are still sealed records in multiple ongoing cases.
A source familiar with the situation told the Caller that a very few individuals actually were aware of the final memo being released.
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