Jasmine Crockett Wants You To Believe Her Epstein-Zeldin Comments Were An Honest Mistake
Texas Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett claimed Wednesday that she was not trying to “mislead people” when she falsely claimed that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin received political donations from registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Crockett made the false allegation during House debate on legislation to force the Trump administration to release files on Epstein. Crockett told “The Source” host Kaitlan Collins that she had “maybe 20 minutes” before the debate took place. (RELATED: Democrat Admits Epstein Was Pulling His Strings)
“I never said it was Jeffrey Epstein,” Crockett said. “Just so people understand that when you donate, your photo is not there. And because they decided to let us know in real time, I wanted the Republicans to think about what could potentially happen, because I knew they hadn’t even tried to go through the FEC. So my team, what they did was they Googled it, and that’s precisely why I said ‘a Jeffrey Epstein.’ Republicans, at least I don’t go out and just lie.”
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“Because it wasn’t the same one, that’s fine, but when Lee Zeldin had something to say, all he had to say was, ‘That was a different Jeffrey Epstein,'” Crockett continued. “He admitted that he received donations from a guy named Jeffrey Epstein, so at least I wasn’t trying to mislead people. Now, did I do any digging to find out who this doctor is? I didn’t. So I’m going to trust and take what he says, which is that it wasn’t Jeffrey Epstein, but I wasn’t trying to mislead anyone. I literally had maybe 20 minutes before I had to do this debate.”
Zeldin pushed back against Crockett’s claims in a very aggressive post on Tuesday X, refuting the claim.
“Yes, Crockett, a doctor named Dr. Jeffrey Epstein (who is a totally different person than the other Jeffrey Epstein) donated to a previous campaign of mine,” Zeldin wrote before inserting clapping emojis into the next sentence.
The Daily Caller News Foundation took less than ten minutes to confirm that the donation to Zeldin occurred in April 2020, months after the disgraced financier apparently committed suicide in his Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial following his 2019 arrest, and that the Epstein in question was an independent physician.
“I literally didn’t know that. When you search the FEC files, and that’s what I asked my team to do, I texted them and said, ‘Look, we’re coming up. They say she accepted donations…'” Crockett asserted before Collins interjected: “Good. But someone might say, well, your team should have done their homework to make sure it wasn’t the trafficker sexually condemned.”
“In 20 minutes, you couldn’t find out, not just by doing a quick search on FEC,” Crockett responded. “So, first of all, I made sure I was clear that it was a Jeffrey Epstein, but I never said it was specifically this Jeffrey Epstein, because I knew we would need more time to really dig into it.”
President Donald Trump asked Republicans to support legislation to make the files public on Sunday, leading to the bill passing the House by a vote of 427-1 on Tuesday. Trump announced he signed the bill Wednesday evening after the Senate passed it by unanimous consent.
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