As the Jeffrey Epstein story continues to engulf the Trump Administration, one thing has become clear: A lot of people going on television to defend Trump are unfamiliar with the basic facts of the case.
Trump himself has been using a talking point that the “Epstein files” were somehow fabricated by Trump enemies like James Comey, during past Democratic administrations. And over the weekend, one Republican senator misstated who was president during Epstein’s prosecution, and the “sweetheart plea deal” he received in 2008.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) appeared with CNN’s Jake Tapper on his State of the Union show over the weekend to defend the Trump Administration’s position on Epstein.
MARKWAYNE MULLIN: Remember, there was a sweetheart plea deal that was struck in 2009, way before Trump was even considering to be in office, under the Obama administration
TAPPER: No. It was 2008. The US attorney at the time was a guy named Alex Acosta. He was a Bush appointee.… pic.twitter.com/UBAe5NviYy
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 27, 2025
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Mullin claimed that the plea deal had been reached in 2009, under the Obama Administration, but as Tapper corrected him, the deal happened in 2008, under George W. Bush’s administration. The U.S. attorney in Florida who agreed to it was Republican Bush appointee Alex Acosta, who, a decade later, served as the Secretary of Labor in the Trump Administration. Acosta resigned from Trump’s cabinet in 2019, amid scrutiny over his role in that Epstein plea deal.
Then Mullin, when corrected by Tapper, refused to back down, repeatedly asking “who was in office at the time” and stating, falsely, that Obama was president at the time of the Epstein plea deal.
Later in the interview, Mullin insisted that the plea deal was “sealed” in 2009:
Holy shit — Markwayne Mullin insists later in the interview again that Obama oversaw actually oversaw the sweetheart deal with Epstein, even after Tapper (accurately) fact-checked him. Yikes. pic.twitter.com/hbR9msyHQs
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 27, 2025
Per The Independent, “Epstein’s plea agreement was drafted in 2007 and signed in 2008, when he pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for sex, before Obama was even president.”
Furthermore, Epstein’s second indictment, arrest, and death all took place during Trump’s first presidency, which complicates further conspiracy theories about Democrats somehow puppet-mastering those events.
NPR reported that Mullin had blocked a Senate resolution that would have required the Justice Department to release all Epstein-related documents.
“What we’re simply wanting to do here is give them cover,” Mullin said at the time.
Photo courtesy of X screenshot.
