Former prime minister Naftali Bennett on Monday rejected accusations, including from US pundit Tucker Carlson, that disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein was an intelligence asset of the Israeli government.
Epstein’s 2020 death in US federal custody was deemed a suicide by the Trump administration last week, fueling accusations of a cover-up. For years, popular conspiracy theories have suggested that the wealthy New York socialite ran a blackmail ring to entrap the rich and powerful, and was the victim of a homicide in jail, with some suggesting he was blackmailing on behalf of Israel.
“As a former Israeli Prime Minister, with the Mossad having reported directly to me, I say to you with 100% certainty: The accusation that Jeffrey Epstein somehow worked for Israel or the Mossad running a blackmail ring is categorically and totally false,” Bennett wrote on X, marking a rare foray by senior Israeli politician into the murky world of conspiracy theories, many of them fueled by antisemitism.
“Epstein’s conduct, both the criminal and the merely despicable, had nothing whatsoever to do with the Mossad or the State of Israel,” the former premier continued, referring to Epstein’s sex trafficking of underage girls.
“This accusation [of an Israeli connection] is a lie being peddled by prominent online personalities such as Tucker Carlson pretending they know things they don’t. They just make things up, say it with confidence and these lies stick, because it’s Israel,” Bennett said.
“There’s a vicious wave of slander and lies against my country and my people, and we just won’t take it anymore,” he concluded.
Carlson responded to Bennett’s post on X, writing later: “You ‘just won’t take it anymore’? Instead of issuing threats on social media, why don’t you sit down for a rational interview on Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to the Israeli government? We’ll reach out to your office this morning.”
On Friday, Carlson said it was “extremely obvious to anyone who watches” that Epstein “had direct connections to a foreign government,” and that “no one’s allowed to say that foreign government is Israel, because we’ve been somehow cowed into thinking that that’s naughty.”
The comments — which drew cheers from a young, pro-Trump crowd at the conservative Turning Point USA conference — came amid outcry among Republican influencers after the administration’s much-hyped investigation into the Epstein case ended with an endorsement of the mainstream account.
Many among the MAGA faithful have long contended that so-called “Deep State” actors were hiding information on Epstein’s elite associates.
Interest in the Epstein case surged last week after the US Justice Department and FBI issued a two-page statement saying that they had concluded that Epstein did not possess a “client list,” or was blackmailing powerful figures — even though Attorney General Pam Bondi had intimated in February that such a document was sitting on her desk — and had decided against releasing any additional records from the investigation.
The department did disclose a video meant to prove that Epstein killed himself in jail, but even that raised the eyebrows of conspiracy theorists because of a missing minute in the recording.
Trump — who himself had public ties to Epstein, going back decades — has lashed out against the criticism from within his base, defending his attorney general in a lengthy post to social media on Saturday in which he urged followers not to “waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.”
Trump, who appears in at least one decades-old video alongside Epstein at a party, has denied allegations that he was named in the files or had any direct connection to the financier.
“The conspiracy theories just aren’t true, never have been,” said FBI Director Patel on Saturday, hours before Trump’s social media post.