Tucker Carlson, once a sycophant, now a fierce Trump critic, dropped his biggest hammer blow yet. He asserted Trump directly ordered the government to coverup the Epstein files.
The charge is explosive and may equal or exceed the illegality of President Nixon’s attempted coverup of the Democratic headquarters breakin at the Watergate hotel, which eventually cost Nixon his presidency.
Carlson is the first former Trump sycophant to declare the president is personally engineering the cover up from the White House.
The claim is even more damning because Trump vowed during his 2024 election campaign to release all of the Epstein files, insisting he had been “exonerated” and had nothing to hide.
He also signed into law the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The measure requires the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to release all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials related to Epstein.
The DOJ, under then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, halted the regular release of new materials on Jan. 30.
On the same day, then Deputy Attoreney General Todd Blanche announced that no further documents would be forthcoming. Blanche said the department had completed its obligations under the Act, even though as many as 3 million undisclosed Epstein files still remain under wraps in government custody.
Trump fired Bondi in April and Blanche was confirmed to fill the top job in a narrow 50–49 Senate vote early in the morning on Aug 8. The Justice Department has been stonewalling nearly a dozen different investigations over the summer.
In June, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled in lawyer/journalist Katie Phang lawsuit against the DOJ that the department was in explicit violation of the transparancy act.
The judge noted that Blanche essentially conceded he violated the measure. But still has yet to produce any new documents.
The court issued a preliminary injunction forcing the DOJ to either release the redacted information or provide exhaustive legal justification.
Carlson said on his podcast, “The Tucker Carlson Show” that he warned Trump last year about political fallout from withholding the files.
‘My position from the beginning with Trump, I said it to Trump, was, ‘I don’t understand why you would ever keep any of this stuff secret.’ And I got like a bunch of different answers,'” Carlson said.
‘The order to cover it up came from Trump,’ the former Fox News host said. ‘I asked him why. And he gave me this long, very emotional explanation that this was all a plot against him, like Russiagate.’
“In the end, it came from Trump directly,” he said.
Although Trump and Carlson have had minor skirmishes over policy before, the final falling out came in June 2025 over Trump’s Iranian foreign policy.
He publicly criticized Trump, for abandoning its “America First” isolationist principles and falling captive to neoconservative warmongers in Congress and Israel.
Trump lashed back on Truth Social, infamously calling Carlson “kooky Tucker” and a “low IQ person.” He also mocked him over his forced departure from Fox News related to the network’s coverage of the 2020 election.
Carlson said Trump should be removed from office for recklessly threatening first use of nuclear weapons against Iran. “Any president who actively considers the first use of nuclear weapons crosses an absolute red line and immediately forfeits their right to lead the nation,” he said.
Carlson also said on his podcast that he is “tormented” by his past support and apologized to his audience for misleading them about Trump.
Keith Girard has four decades of experience as an award-winning reporter, editor-in-chief, and senior media executive. Keith’s career began in Washington, D.C., where he was a reporter for The Washington Post and a contributing editor for Regardie’s and Washingtonian magazines. He also worked as a writer/producer in CNN’s Washington Bureau and has written non-fiction books on the U.S. Marines in the Gulf War and Donald Trump and two novels, “The Heidelberg Conundrum” and “The Curse of Northam Bay.”