Jonathan S. Tobin
JNS, July 14, 2025
“… neither Carlson nor Kelly—nor anyone else talking about this publicly—has any tangible, concrete evidence of Israeli government involvement in Epstein’s sex crimes. And they freely admit as much.”
Conspiracy theories aren’t generally concocted out of whole cloth. They are almost always rooted in quite real and terrible events for which there are no conclusive and satisfactory answers.
That is why last week’s announcement that the U.S. Department of Justice’s attempt to take a deep dive into the records of the case of disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein produced no great revelations. Neither did it reveal a much-sought-after list of celebrity “clients” for whom he procured underage victims. The lack of any definitive results was bound to be met with anger from an Internet audience already prone to disbelieve any official response. Predictably, it strengthened the conviction among those who had immersed themselves in this sordid story that this, too, was just more evidence of a grand plot to fool the public and cover up unspeakable crimes.
But just as predictable was the next step down the rabbit hole of Epstein conspiracy theories. Within days of Attorney General Pam Bondi admitting that no evidence in the FBI’s files would allow the Justice Department to continue the investigation, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson doubled down on the idea of a government cover-up while speaking at the Turning Point USA conference in Tampa, Fla.
Not only was he willing to hurl such an accusation at an administration made up of his presumable political allies. He went further by claiming to an audience cheering his supposed courage in making such charges that Epstein was an agent of the government of Israel, whose vile actions were somehow part of an effort to blackmail politicians and celebrities. Unsatisfied with such slander, he also invoked the notion that the entire financial industry is some sort of scam—and attacked pro-Israel billionaire Bill Ackman for good measure. ….SOURCE