JD Vance
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JD Vance is the vice president of the United States and, at the time John Kiriakou assessed him, the Republican front-runner for 2028. Kiriakou devoted an episode of his own show to a single Vance appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast, treating it as an intelligence problem: not what Vance said, but why he was permitted to say it.

"We mishandled the Epstein files"

The admission itself is what Kiriakou finds least interesting. What shocks him is the tense. Vance spoke as though the Epstein scandal were finished, "as if the Epstein scandal is over and that this is the hotwash." It is not finished: there remain three to three and a half million pages under FBI control that have never been made public, pages the president has said will never be released "because they would embarrass his friends."

Nor have the witnesses been called. Kiriakou's example is Alan Dershowitz, 86, who admitted to receiving a massage from a 16-year-old girl, "and his defense was he kept his underwear on." Republicans on the House Oversight Committee, he notes, "are not even close to calling witnesses to testify, let alone subpoenaing witnesses." Against that, it is "striking to hear the vice president of the United States speak as if the only remaining issue in the administration's communication strategy is just to get this message out."

His second objection is the pivot to blaming Democrats for inaction under Biden. Kiriakou concedes the point partly, Democrats "were not exactly champions of releasing these files under Biden, probably because it would have embarrassed friends of theirs", but says it omits the decisive fact: "Republicans campaigned on releasing the files." It was used against Kamala Harris. Having promised release and then reversed course after handing Epstein binders to MAGA influencers, they made the scandal more obvious, not less.

He also refuses the search for a scapegoat in Congress. Ro Khanna "is not the enemy here," and neither is Thomas Massie: "You got to blame it on Joe Biden and Donald Trump, because the buck has to stop somewhere."

Not rogue

The core of Kiriakou's reading is institutional. Vance "very much still has a seat at the table for all things intelligence", not running the FBI, but close enough to know its internal strategy and the political calculations around it. "If the White House wanted him delivering a different message, he wouldn't be going on the Joe Rogan show."

Hence: "There's no way that JD Vance of all people is going rogue here. My assumption is that this was approved."

The purposes he proposes are two, possibly both at once, cooling frustration in the MAGA base, and creating distance between Vance and the rollout ahead of 2028. The permission structure he infers is precise: Vance may stake out a slightly different position "while not pointing the finger at Donald Trump", "Yeah, we made mistakes. Yeah, if it was up to me, I would have done it differently, but you know, I'm just the vice president."

On the nomination itself, Kiriakou dissents from the consensus: Vance is the front-runner today, but "I personally think he's not going to be the nominee. He's very young. He can run for president every four years for the next 40 years if he wants." His prediction is Marco Rubio.

The felony said in passing

The exchange Kiriakou calls "even more remarkable" concerns whether Epstein was tied to an intelligence service. Vance grants the connections, to the highest levels of both American and Israeli intelligence, says he has asked whether documents exist linking Epstein directly to any agency, and reports the answer was no. Then the clause Kiriakou fixes on: "But if that existed, it wouldn't exist in 2026."

Kiriakou's parse is unsparing: "He essentially accused the CIA of obstruction of justice, of destroying documents. That's a felony. And he just said it matter-of-factly." He cannot recall a precedent, "I don't know if we've ever had someone in the White House openly speculate" about this on a podcast. He allows that the underlying claim is plausible, since "the CIA has destroyed documents in the past. Just Google MK-Ultra."

The result is a problem with no innocent reading: "it puts us in a tough position of trying to figure out who's not being honest about the files, because somebody's clearly lying. Is it the CIA, or is it JD Vance?"

His explanation for why the White House cleared the appearance follows from it: probably because the documents contain "a lot of inference but no documentary evidence" of a foreign intelligence link, and that absence is "one of the few things Democrats would be willing to work with Republicans on to keep private." He stresses the bipartisanship of the exposure: "The Republicans are in the Epstein files up to their necks just as much as the Democrats are. They're both corrupt. They're two sides of the same coin."

The hole in the truth-teller claim

Kiriakou's strongest objection is about capability rather than sincerity. If Vance genuinely believes there are unanswered questions about an Epstein,Mossad tie, "he's in one of the very few positions in government where he can actually ask those questions and demand answers." He has the director of national intelligence, the CIA director "on speed dial," the FBI director whenever he wants; he can request briefings at the highest levels of classification and push investigators to establish whether credible evidence exists.

"But instead, he just decided to speculate on the Joe Rogan podcast."

The professional distinction he draws is the article's conclusion: "From an intelligence standpoint, I always pay attention to the difference between evidence and messaging. Right now, JD Vance is offering messaging. He's not presenting any new evidence. The evidence is probably there. They're just not allowing us to see it."

Does a vice president even read the files?

Asked whether presidents and vice presidents actually read documents like the Epstein files, Kiriakou's answer is flat: no. What he learned early at the CIA is that "the president just doesn't have the time to read everything that you or I would want him to read." Hence the constraint on the president's daily brief, "never, ever, ever more than 16 pages long. Ever."

He illustrates it with his own first attempts at writing for the brief, and the correction from his boss: "The president doesn't give a [damn] about your opinions. The president wants to read this entire story in one paragraph. Make it fit into one paragraph." The conclusion for the Epstein files is arithmetic, "There aren't enough hours in the day."

Whether it is enough for the base

Asked whether the Epstein manoeuvre secures Vance the 2028 nomination, Kiriakou says the premise is too narrow: "I think the MAGA base is very upset about a lot more than the Epstein files." What he names instead is the war, "this war of choice that we're fighting in Iran right now, with no exit strategy at all," and the price of gas.

The Rogan interview

In July 2026 JD Vance went on the Joe Rogan programme and conceded that the administration had mishandled the release of the Epstein files, saying everything should have been dropped at the beginning. John Kiriakou, who says intelligence work teaches you to pay close attention when a government voluntarily changes its story, took the admission as a signal rather than a slip.

What stopped him was a different remark. Asked whether documents existed connecting Epstein to any intelligence service, Vance said the answer was no, and then added that if such documents had existed, they would not exist in 2026. Kiriakou's reading is unambiguous: "He essentially accused the CIA of obstruction of justice, of destroying documents. That's a felony. And he just said it matter-of-factly." He grants the CIA has destroyed documents before, pointing at MK Ultra, but says the episode leaves the public unable to tell who is being dishonest.

Kiriakou does not believe Vance went rogue. As vice president, Vance still has a seat at the table for intelligence matters, is close enough to know internal FBI strategy and the political calculations, and would not have been on the show with that message if the White House wanted a different one, so Kiriakou assumes it was approved, either to cool frustration among the base or to create distance ahead of 2028, or both.

He also draws a limit around the admission: if Vance genuinely believes there are unanswered questions about a foreign intelligence link, he is in one of the very few positions in government able to demand answers, he can reach the Director of National Intelligence, has the CIA Director on speed dial, can request briefings at the highest classification, and instead chose to speculate on a podcast. "Right now, J.D. Vance is offering messaging. He's not presenting any new evidence."

On Vance's prospects Kiriakou is a dissenter: he calls him the current front-runner for the 2028 Republican nomination but does not expect him to be the nominee, on the grounds that he is very young and can run every four years for the next forty, and predicts Marco Rubio instead.

On the non-interventionist side of the Iran split

Assessing the 2026 Iran war as "a disastrous miscalculation", Kiriakou placed Vance with Tulsi Gabbard among those in the administration "who reportedly have been opposed to these foreign interventions", against Marco Rubio as "the successor to the John McCain wing." See the Republican split over the Iran war.

The 2028 calculation

During the 2026 Iran war, John Kiriakou noted reporting that Vance was worried enough about the war's unpopularity to be signalling privately that he might not run in 2028, and agreed with the underlying judgement: "I think he's a sure loser. I really do." His reasoning was Vance's age, "He's young. He can run 10, 20, 30 years from now if he wants", set against the impossibility of running in two years while tied to Donald Trump.

Asked directly whether the war's stink could be rinsed off by 2028, his answer was that there was not time: "He's going to have to either break with Donald Trump now or break with Donald Trump in 2 years. And I don't think he can survive that within the Republican Party."

His recommended course is patience: "It would be far more advantageous for him if he were to finish out the term, go back to Wall Street, make millions and millions of dollars, and just wait a little bit like Richard Nixon did."

He rejected the alternative, a principled resignation over the war, not because it would be wrong but because it would not work: a resignation "doesn't mean he gets to become president, because he's just not beloved." The model he was measuring it against was a fantasy he says he has long entertained, of Colin Powell reaching the UN lectern and announcing that the speech he had been given was all lies.

See also

- John Kiriakou
- Jeffrey Epstein
- Alan Dershowitz
- President's daily brief
- Donald Trump
