Bill O’Reilly considers himself a balls-and-strikes kind of conservative commentator, and has taken Donald Trump to task in the past. But on the Epstein matter, the “No Spin News” host and former Fox News anchor says not only is there “exculpatory evidence” to show the president wasn’t complicit in Epstein’s crimes, an unfettered release of the case files could hurt innocent people.
“Since President Trump was inaugurated in January, the Democratic Party has tried to smear him with Epstein and to tie Mr. Trump to crimes that Jeffrey Epstein committed,” O’Reilly said on the Friday edition of his show. “They do it every day, all day. That’s what they want to do. There is no evidence that that happened. None.”
The veteran broadcaster and bestselling author, who never misses an opportunity to tear into his former profession and employers like CBS, ABC and Fox, said the press “went nuts” last week when Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight leaked emails suggesting Trump “knew about the girls.”
“I looked at the emails — nothing there,” O’Reilly said with disgust. “There’s just nothing there. And even worse, there is innuendo that could get people hurt.”
O’Reilly recalled a March meeting with the president, who asked him whether he should just release the files in their entirety.
“I said, ‘Yeah, if they’re verified. But if they’re not verified — if it’s rumor and the Justice Department hasn’t nailed it down … ,’” he said. “Remember, two Justice Departments: Merrick Garland’s, and the Trump one under William Barr. Those things have been investigated like crazy. I said, ‘If there’s evidence that somebody was hanging with Epstein … but if this is just rumor — no. People get hurt.’”
Despite that danger, O’Reilly continued, “that is what they want.”
“‘They’ being the Trump haters, want everything the Justice Department has on Jeffrey Epstein,” he said. “I’m right on this. But the bigger picture is that due process is really under fire in this country. Whether you care or not, there is exculpatory evidence in Donald Trump’s favor, and it’s very powerful evidence.”
O’Reilly noted that the three principal witnesses in the case – Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, survivor Virginia Giuffre and Alan Dershowitz, Epstein’s lawyer – “all said Trump wasn’t involved with anything untoward. All three.”
O’Reilly called that “enough reasonable doubt that it will never get to court in any way, shape or form. It would get thrown out in 10 seconds.”
He then played a clip of Dershowitz saying, “I was trying to make him the best possible deal I could make. That’s my job. Among the questions I asked him, as any lawyer would, is: Can you name people who may have had improper sexual relationships with anybody? … And then I went through a variety of names, including Donald Trump. And Jeffrey Epstein said, ‘No, Trump didn’t do anything wrong.’ So what more do you need?”
Despite all that, O’Reilly said, the press “ran wild.”
“ABC ‘World News Tonight’ spent 4 minutes 23 seconds on the story,” he continued. “NBC ‘Nightly News,’ 4 minutes 34 seconds. ‘CBS Evening News,’ 2 minutes 7 seconds. On cable — these are estimates because it’s a three-hour prime window — CNN, 1 hour 10 minutes. MSNBC, a whopping 2 hours 9 minutes. Fox News spent 5 minutes on it.”
Watch O’Reilly make his entire case in the video above.
