What to Know
It’s been more than a month since the Department of Justice was supposed to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, but with everything else happening in the United States right now, people aren’t really talking about that anymore. Joe Rogan doesn’t think it’s a coincidence. When discussing the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files on a recent episode of his podcast, Rogan suggested that the U.S. government is using other controversies as a distraction.
Rogan said “the whole thing is weird.”
He thinks people have reason to be suspicious, given that the Department of Justice was required to release the Epstein documents by December 19, 2025, but still hasn’t released most of them. And when it comes to the few files they actually did release, Rogan still has questions. “I mean, they said they released them, but what did they release?” he said during a conversation with the guest on his podcast, comedian Ehsan Ahmad.
Although the DOJ was expected to release the files over a month ago at this point, Rogan doesn’t think we’ll be seeing them anytime soon. “It’s gonna go on for a long time, I suspect,” he told Ahmad.
Ahmad mentioned that everyone’s talking about ICE and fraud claims in Minnesota.
Right now, people are very focused on what’s happening in Minnesota — and understandably so. The podcast episode came out before Alex Pretti was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. However, Ahmad mentioned the fatal shooting of Renee Good. He said the delayed release of the Epstein files has seemingly been “drowned out by everything else that’s been going on with like Somalians and the ICE shooting.” And with everyone so focused on ICE and the fraud claims, no one really seems to be talking about the Epstein files anymore.
Rogan implied that these distractions are very convenient for the Trump administration and suggested that they’re actually intentional. “I think some of that’s on purpose,” he said quietly.
Rogan has been more critical of President Donald Trump lately.
In 2024, he endorsed Trump. But he recently questioned the Trump administration’s narrative after Good was shot and killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. Trump administration officials have repeatedly claimed that Good was trying to hit the ICE agent with her car, but Rogan seemed skeptical on an earlier episode of his podcast: “When people say it’s justifiable because the car hit him? It seemed like she was turning the car away,” he said.
Referring to ICE, he said, “You don’t want militarized people in the streets just roaming around, snatching up people, many of which turn out to be U.S. citizens that just don’t have their papers on them. Are we really gonna be the Gestapo, ‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?”
