WATCH: O’Reilly Reveals Why President Trump Won’t Release Epstein Files — You Decide If It’s Justified

For years, Americans have demanded to know who was involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s global web of elite perversion. And for years, they’ve been promised transparency. So when the Trump administration recently confirmed there would be no so-called “client list,” many were left asking: What changed?

According to former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, President Donald J. Trump gave him the answer — personally.

The media firestorm began again after Attorney General Pam Bondi dismissed the idea that Epstein was tied to intelligence agencies, and the Department of Justice released surveillance footage from Epstein’s cell the night he reportedly took his own life. Notably, the footage had a missing minute, which Bondi brushed off as a “routine bug.”

The explanation didn’t satisfy the American public. On X (formerly Twitter), users brought up the infamous 2007 plea deal brokered by then-prosecutor Alex Acosta, who once reportedly claimed Epstein was “intelligence” and therefore untouchable. Former CIA officer John Kiriakou speculated that holdovers within the federal bureaucracy — beneath Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel — may have destroyed critical files.

Tucker Carlson, never one to shy away from asking hard questions, added that the refusal to release names could mean one of two things: either President Trump himself was somehow involved (which Carlson dismissed as unlikely), or that “intel services are at the very center of this story, U.S. and Israeli.”

But O’Reilly offered another perspective — one he said came directly from President Trump during a face-to-face meeting.

Appearing on NewsNation with Chris Cuomo, O’Reilly said the two met “man-to-man, eye-to-eye on St. Patrick’s Day” to discuss not only Epstein but also other government secrets, including the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King Jr.

“He said, and I agree, there are a lot of names associated with Epstein that had nothing to do with Epstein’s conduct,” O’Reilly recounted.

“They maybe had lunch with him or maybe had some correspondence for one thing or another. If that name gets out, those people are destroyed, because there’s not going to be any context.”

O’Reilly didn’t claim the situation was being handled perfectly. He urged Attorney General Bondi to be more forthcoming and to explain the administration’s decisions in a “methodical way.”

“You can’t destroy human beings by putting out the files, whatever they may be,” O’Reilly added. “But you certainly can have Attorney General Bondi say, ‘This is what we know, and you know we’re going to protect the innocent.’”

Is that enough? That depends on whether you believe the government is still capable of distinguishing guilt from association — and whether you trust that the bureaucracy hasn’t buried the truth.

A sobering historical parallel is the Watergate scandal. For years, Americans speculated about the identity of the mysterious whistleblower “Deep Throat.” Names like Henry Kissinger, Justice William Rehnquist, and even President Nixon himself were floated. But the real source turned out to be W. Mark Felt, an associate director of the FBI — a relatively unknown figure who had been passed over for promotion. The Nixon White House figured it out within months, but the public didn’t know for decades.

So what would happen if an Epstein client list were released?

Would it be full of high-profile figures like Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, or Hollywood royalty? Maybe not. The list, if it exists, might mostly consist of obscure bureaucrats, financial middlemen, and yes — the occasional unfortunate who once accepted a lunch invitation without knowing who Epstein truly was.

Releasing the full list without context could destroy reputations needlessly. And it’s entirely plausible that the names the American people want to see — those who abused power and preyed on minors — are nowhere near the list, thanks to the deep state’s efforts to cleanse it long ago.

The sad truth is this: If the deep state didn’t outright destroy the files, they’ve likely buried them so deep that even a determined president can’t pull them out without collateral damage. And while President Trump may want the truth exposed, he may also understand better than anyone that unleashing names without certainty could destroy innocent lives — all while the guilty walk free.

In the end, this may be yet another instance where the American people are asked to simply “trust the process” — a bitter pill after six years of unanswered questions.