Johnson rectifies: Trump was not an FBI informant in the Jeffrey Epstein case.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson has retracted his claims about President Donald Trump's alleged cooperation as an "FBI informant" in the case against deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Johnson defended Trump last week, saying he sympathized with the victims of the late New York financier, whom the president "kicked" out of his private Mar-a-Lago resort "when he heard a rumor" that Epstein was a sexual predator: "Trump was an FBI informant trying to put an end to that."

A statement from Johnson's office on Sunday clarified the claims.

"The House Speaker reiterates what the victims' attorney said: that Donald Trump, who expelled Epstein from Mar-a-Lago, was the only one more than a decade ago willing to help prosecutors expose Epstein as a repugnant child predator," the statement reiterates.

Last Wednesday, a group of Epstein victims called for "transparency" from the U.S. Congress and supported a legislative initiative to pressure the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release all documents related to the attacker.

Speaking to the press, Brad Edwards, the victims' attorney, stated that the US president has changed his stance on the case and noted that when he spoke with Trump in 2009, he was "kind" and sympathetic to the victims.

"He didn't believe it was a hoax and tried to be helpful," Edwards said of a previous conversation with the president, who insists—without providing evidence—that the Epstein case is a "Democratic hoax" to tarnish his presidency.

Last week, the House of Representatives released more than 33,000 pages of documents from the case, although most of them were already public and many others were redacted.

Democratic Representative Ro Khanna is leading an effort to force a vote in Congress requiring the Justice Department to release more material, which he stated last Wednesday has the support of all 212 Democratic members of Congress and four Republican members of the House, leaving only two more signatures missing.

Trump has tried unsuccessfully to quell the discontent of members of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, his staunchest supporters, after the FBI ruled out the existence of the client list and confirmed that Epstein died by suicide.

MAGA members are demanding the release of all evidence against the sex offender, as Trump promised before returning to power last January.

Trump was friends with Epstein during the 1980s and 1990s, and the relationship between the two has come into question in recent months after several reports in The Wall Street Journal revealed they were closer than the president has acknowledged.