Right-wing US pundit Tucker Carlson suggested that the late notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had been working for Israeli intelligence services throughout the years in which he was allegedly sexually abusing and trafficking underage girls, adding fuel to the fire that has re-erupted among conspiracy theorists in recent days around the disgraced financier.

Carlson, an ex-Fox News host and a conspiracy theorist, was speaking at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit on Friday when he turned to the matter of Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking minors.

Epstein’s life and death have made headlines again in recent days after US President Donald Trump’s administration decided to withhold records from the investigation and claimed that Epstein’s much-hyped “client list” had never existed in the first place.

That decision by the US Justice Department and FBI angered far-right conservative personalities and influential members of Trump’s base, who have long contended that so-called “deep state” actors were hiding information on Epstein’s elite associates.

Addressing the conservative conference, Carlson said that the real question that needed to be asked about Epstein was not “was Jeffrey Epstein a weirdo who was abusing girls?” but rather, “why was he doing this, on whose behalf, and where was the money coming from?”

“And I think the real answer is Jeffrey Epstein was working on behalf of intel services, probably not American,” he said. “And we have every right to ask, ‘On whose behalf was he working?'”

He questioned how Epstein could have gone from being a math teacher without a degree to “having multiple airplanes, a private island, and the largest residential........

© The Times of Israel