Right-wing US pundit Tucker Carlson suggested recently that the late notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had been working for Israeli intelligence services throughout the years in which he was allegedly sexually abusing and trafficking underage girls, adding fuel to the fire that has re-erupted among conspiracy theorists in recent days around the disgraced financier.
Carlson, an ex-Fox News host and conspiracy theorist, was speaking at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit on Friday when he turned to the matter of Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019, while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking minors.
Epstein’s life and death have made headlines again in recent days after US President Donald Trump’s administration decided to withhold records from the investigation and claimed that Epstein’s much-hyped “client list” had never existed in the first place.
This decision by the US Justice Department and FBI has angered far-right conservative personalities and influential members of Trump’s base, who have long contended that so-called “Deep State” actors were hiding information on Epstein’s elite associates.
Addressing the conservative conference, Carlson said that the real question that needed to be asked about Epstein was not “was Jeffrey Epstein a weirdo who was abusing girls?” but rather, “why was he doing this, on whose behalf, and where was the money coming from?”
“And I think the real answer is Jeffrey Epstein was working on behalf of intel services , probably not American,” he said. “And we have every right to ask ‘on whose behalf was he working?'”
He questioned how Epstein could have gone from being a math teacher without a degree to “having multiple airplanes, a private island, and the largest residential house in Manhattan?”
“Where did all the money come from?” Carlson asked a silent crowd.
He answered his own question a moment later, declaring it “extremely obvious to anyone who watches” that Epstein “had direct connections to a foreign government.”
“Now, no one’s allowed to say that foreign government is Israel, because we’ve been somehow cowed into thinking that that’s naughty,” he said, raising his voice as the crowd erupted into applause and cheers of support.
“There is nothing wrong with saying that, there’s nothing hateful about saying that, there’s nothing antisemitic about saying that – there’s nothing even anti-Israel about saying that!”
After briefly diverting his attention to accuse the CIA of “participating in the murder of a sitting US president” — a reference to the conspiracy concerning the assassination of president John F. Kennedy — Carlson returned to the matter at hand, asserting that it was his right as an American citizen to question the alleged involvement of foreign governments in US affairs.
He questioned why nobody ever asked Epstein: “What the hell is this? You have the former Israeli prime minister living in your house, you have had all this contact with a foreign government, were you working on behalf of the Mossad? Were you running a blackmail operation on behalf of a foreign government?”
The former Israeli prime minister in question is Ehud Barak, who reportedly met with Epstein about 30 times from 2013 to 2017 at his estates in Florida and New York.
Barak is far from the only powerful person named in documents linked to Epstein, which include among their most prominent names former US president Bill Clinton; former British prime minister Tony Blair; Prince Andrew, the brother of Britain’s King Charles III; and US President Donald Trump.
Yet Carlson alleged to the rapt audience that “every single person in Washington, DC,” thinks that Epstein was operating on behalf of the Mossad.
“I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t think that,” he asserted, and claimed, again without backing up his statement with evidence, that the Israeli government has refused to answer any questions pertaining to Epstein, who was not an Israeli citizen.
“As long as we’re sending you money,” he said of Jerusalem, “if you’re committing crimes on our soil, we have an absolute right to know — did you do this or not?”
This was, again, met with wild applause.
He said the American public had been “brainwashed” into believing that asking such a question was bigotry, when, in reality, it was a “baseline question that every US citizen has a right to an answer on.”
At a separate point during his 45-minute-long session, Carlson declared that any Americans who serve in foreign militaries, including the Israeli and Ukrainian armies, should lost their US citizenship.
“I quote the New Testament, but I also refer to common sense when I say that no man can serve two masters, it’s not possible,” he said, in response to a question about whether one can be loyal to more than one country. “I only have one wife for that reason.”
“You can only really pledge your loyalty to one person or one country, that’s just a fact,” posited Carlson.
“There are a lot of Americans who’ve served in the IDF and they should lose their citizenship. There are a lot of Americans who serve in Ukraine, and they should lose their citizenship,” he said. “You can’t fight for another country and remain an American — period. Obviously!”
Americans have been “cowed into believing that’s hate speech,” Carlson continued, and added: “You don’t hear hate in my voice, because there isn’t any.”
Carlson has previously railed against US Rep. Brian Mast, of Florida, for wearing an Israel Defense Forces uniform to Congress in solidarity with Israel in the days after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack.
Mast, a veteran of the US military who lost both his legs fighting in Afghanistan, briefly volunteered with the IDF in January 2025, packing medical kits at an army base near Tel Aviv.