What Megyn Kelly said about Epstein victims and whether he was a pedophile

Claim:

After the U.S. House of Representatives released a batch of emails and documents related to the case of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in November 2025, conservative influencer Megyn Kelly said Epstein was not really a pedophile because he liked 15-year-olds, not 5-year-olds.

Rating:

What’s True

Minutes after citing someone close to the Epstein case as saying Epstein was not a pedophile because he “was into the barely legal type, like, he liked 15-year-old girls” as opposed to “8-year-olds,” Kelly agreed with the point that there is a difference between pre- and post-pubescent children when it comes to sexual abuse. She said, “I think there is a difference. There’s a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old, you know?” However …

What’s False

… She did not explicitly say Epstein was not a pedophile. She only cited someone else as saying that. Further …

What’s Undetermined

… While she agreed with the argument that there is a difference between pre-pubescent and post-pubescent children in terms of sexual abuse, it was unclear whether she thought Epstein was a pedophile. Snopes reached out to her asking her to clarify her position and we will update this report should she or one of her staff respond.

After the U.S. House of Representatives released a batch of emails and documents related to the case of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in November 2025, a rumor spread that conservative influencer Megyn Kelly said Epstein was not really a pedophile because he liked 15-year-olds, not 5-year-olds.

The claim appeared on the Facebook account of Occupy Democrats, for example. The account accused Kelly of “whitewashing” the crimes of U.S. President Donald Trump and Epstein, who maintained a relationship for years (archived): 

This post had amassed 15,000 reactions and 6,000 comments as of this writing. The same claim spread further on Facebook, but also on X.

The claim was a mixture of true, false and undetermined information, though. It was true that Kelly said she believed there was a difference between pre- and post-pubescent children in terms of sexual abuse. Yet she did not explicitly say Epstein was not a pedophile (she cited an unnamed source close to the case as saying that). It was unclear if she thought Epstein was a pedophile, so we reached out to her asking her to clarify her statement and we will update this report should she respond.

The quote comes from the Nov. 12, 2025, episode of Kelly’s podcast, the “Megyn Kelly Show.” Kelly had invited conservative commentator and NewsNation show host Batya Ungar-Sargon. In it, Kelly and Ungar-Sargon discussed Epstein’s emails released that day and gave their opinions as to how much Trump was involved. Both opined that Epstein’s crimes did not make Trump a criminal. 

Kelly said she had seen no evidence of Trump liking “the barely legal type,” referring to post-pubescent adolescent girls. Ungar-Sargon replied that a lawyer for a group of women accusing Epstein of having abused them had said Epstein would “pass on” the girls to other men once they “aged out of Epstein’s pedophilic interest.” 

A few minutes later, Kelly brought up Epstein’s pedophilia again. Citing an unnamed person close to the case, she said that person felt Epstein was “not a pedophile” because he liked “barely legal girls” and not “8-year-olds” (Kelly’s quote starts at 00:30:40 in the video):

As for Epstein, I’ve said this before, but just as a reminder, I do know somebody very, very close to this case who is in a position to know virtually everything. Not everything, but virtually everything. And this person has told me from the start years and years ago, that Jeffrey Epstein, in this person’s view, was not a pedophile. This is this person’s view, who was there for a lot of this, that he was into the barely legal type. Like, he liked 15-year-old girls — and I realize this is disgusting I’m definitely not trying to make an excuse for this. I’m just giving you facts that he wasn’t into like 8-year-olds, but he liked the very young teen types that could pass for even younger than they were but would look legal to a passer-by and that is what I believed and that was what I reliably was told for many years.

In other words, in this passage, Kelly was careful to say this was the unnamed person’s opinion, not hers. 

She then went on to say that Justice Secretary Pam Bondi said the U.S. Department of Justice was holding “tens of thousands of videos of alleged” child sexual abuse material on Epstein’s computer. Kelly added she does not know how much to trust Bondi. 

Later in the video, she repeated that post-pubescent children were not the same as pre-pubescent children, but no longer passed it as someone else’s point. She said she thought there was a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old:

Kelly: I don’t know what’s true about him [Epstein], but we have yet to see anybody come forward and say, “I was 8. I was under 10. I was under 14 when I first came within his purview.” Look, it’s … You can say that’s a distinction without a difference. 

Ungar-Sargon: No, it’s not. 

Kelly: I think there is a difference. There’s a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old, you know?

Kelly then added, “It’s just … whatever. It’s sick. Every time we start talking about Epstein, it makes your skin crawl, right? The whole thing is just disgusting.”

Epstein died by suicide in a jail cell while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking minors in 2019.