Vice President JD Vance has offered a bizarre response when asked about President Donald Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump has been subject to criticism from all sides of the US political spectrum for not releasing documents about Epstein, his former friend and convicted sex criminal.
Epstein - who died in prison in 2019 - has been an uncomfortable issue for many in the Trump administration and beyond in recent times, but now Vance has identified the strangest potential culprit yet.
JD Vance uses an unusual scapegoat for Epstein questions
Speaking in an interview with USA Today, Vance identified the previous POTUS, Joe Biden, as the main problem in the case of the Epstein files.
He said: “We have to remember this entire thing happened, this entire story blew up, during the Biden administration.”
Epstein died in a New York prison in 2019, and Biden was not sworn in as President until January 2021.
Following that claim, Vance went on to allege that the administration under Biden had four years in office to get to the bottom of the Epstein file and didn’t.
But, Trump’s government has so far released only information that was already in the public domain and claimed earlier this summer that the ‘client list’ doesn’t exist, and that there is nothing significant to release.
This hasn’t gone down well with many observers, including those who were previously loyal to Trump.
Vance claims that this government is committed to ‘full transparency’ on the Epstein issue.
He continued: “I think the president has ordered the administration to be more transparent about this than any other issue.”
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What was Donald Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein?
Trump and Epstein were good friends until a dispute - allegedly over a real estate deal - in 2004.
Epstein was first arrested on charges of sexual crimes in 2006, before a controversial prosecutor deal brokered by Alex Acosta - later a Trump administration cabinet member - saw him avoid federal prosecution and a potential life sentence.
He was arrested again in 2019 and died in custody while awaiting trial for trafficking children for sex, as well as other charges.
Theories continue to swirl around how exactly Epstein died, but all agree that his death occurred around a year and a half before Biden assumed office.
Vance also took time to mention a recent interview given by longstanding - and incredibly well paid - Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
Maxwell said: “I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way,
“The president was never inappropriate with anybody.”
Maxwell was later moved from a federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security facility in Texas.