The initial airing of a Fox News interview with Donald Trump last week cut out the former president saying he may not declassify federal files about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who maintained close relationships with dozens of politicians, celebrities and other public figures before being found dead in his jail cell.
The discrepancy was first reported on Sunday by Semafor’s Max Tani, who found that the president’s June 2 interview on Fox & Friends only included the first part of Trump’s answer to host Rachel Campos-Duffy’s question: “Would you declassify the Epstein files?” In that airing, Trump replied, “Yeah, I would,” and the segment ended.
But Trump’s full answer played later on Will Cain’s Fox News radio show, revealing that he quickly hedged his response, Semafor found.
“I guess I would. I think that less so because, you don’t know, you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would,” Trump said.
When Campos-Duffy asked him if he thought declassifying the documents would “help restore trust,” Trump reiterated he’s not sure what he’d do with the Epstein files.
“I don’t know about Epstein so much as I do the others,” he continued. “Certainly about the way he died. It’d be interesting to find out what happened there, because that was a weird situation and the cameras didn’t happen to be working, etc., etc. But yeah, I’d go a long way toward that one.”
That full response also played on Monday’s airing of Fox & Friends.
Fox News, a network with a history of friendly Trump coverage, did not respond to a request for comment.
Some people affiliated with Trump have been mentioned in unsealed documents about Epstein, who was awaiting trial for sweeping sex trafficking charges when he was found hanging in his cell in 2019. Among them is Alan Dershowitz, a lawyer for both Trump and Epstein. Virginia Giuffre, an alleged victim of Epstein who once worked at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property, said in 2014 the financier trafficked her to have sex with Dershowitz.
She backtracked on the lawyer’s involvement in 2022, saying she “may have made a mistake in identifying Mr. Dershowitz.” Dershowitz has denied the accusations.