Former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett on 14 July issued a rare personal statement denying that the late U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein ever worked for Israel or its intelligence agency, the Mossad. “With 100 percent certainty, the accusation that Epstein ran a Mossad blackmail ring is categorically false,” Bennett wrote on X, adding that the claim is part of “a vicious wave of slander” against Israel. Bennett’s intervention came after U.S. broadcaster Tucker Carlson told a conservative conference that Epstein “obviously” had links to a foreign government—implying Israel. Carlson challenged Bennett to sit for an interview, while Bennett accused Carlson and others of spreading fabrications for political effect. The dispute intensified a parallel fight inside the American conservative movement over the Trump administration’s handling of the long-running Epstein investigation. A Justice Department memo released last week reaffirmed the official finding that Epstein died by suicide in 2019 and said no additional files would be made public, angering some Trump supporters who had expected new disclosures. On the same day as Bennett’s statement, Megyn Kelly and Ben Shapiro clashed on Kelly’s show about whether anonymous law-enforcement sources—cited by Kelly—contradict the memo. Shapiro argued that Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and other named officials carry more weight than unnamed sources, while Kelly said the administration may be protecting undisclosed information and even suggested President Donald Trump had “blessed” a partial cover-up. The exchange underscored the widening conservative rift over how much of the Epstein case remains hidden and whether any intelligence service, Israeli or otherwise, exploited the disgraced financier.