A Long Island neurosurgeon who has the misfortune to be named Dr Jeffrey Epstein has an ingenious idea for how he might respond to Texas Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett after she confused him with the notorious sex offender of the same name.

“I think that I should contribute money to Jasmine Crockett and then let everybody know that she also took money from Jeffrey Epstein,” the physician joked to The New York Post.

Crockett threatened on the floor of the House of Representatives Tuesday that she was “gonna expose it all” after discovering that “somebody named Jeffrey Epstein” had donated to the campaign of the former New York Republican congressman Lee Zeldin, now director of the Environmental Protection Agency.

She also called out Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin and the late John McCain, amongst others, for taking money from Epstein, not realising she had the wrong man.

The Democrat failed to notice that the pair of $1,000 donations she was referring to in Zeldin’s case had been made to in April and August 2020 while the disgraced financier died by suicide in a New York City jail cell in August 2019 as he awaited trial.

“No freaking relation you genius!” Zeldin responded to Crockett on X.

McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain, also hit back, writing on the same platform: “My Dad has been dead seven years Jasmine Crockett. He never met Jeffrey Epstein, let alone took money from him. The Jeffrey Epstein you are referencing is an entirely different human being. Do you have mashed potatoes for brains, you absolute joke?!”

Crockett mounted a somewhat desperate defense when she was confronted about the blunder by Kaitlan Collins on CNN, insisting: “Unlike Republicans, I at least don’t go out and just tell lies. So, number one, I made sure that I was clear that it was a Jeffrey Epstein, but I never said that it was specifically that Jeffrey Epstein.”

Speaking to the Post, the wrongly-identified Dr Epstein said: “Until she said something, it was never an issue. I say my name and sometimes people will give me a look, or whatever.”

Asked how he typically responds in such situations, he answered: “I always look at them and say, ‘I don’t understand,’ and I make it like I’m dumb.”

“Listen, that’s my name,” he continued. “If my name was Jeffrey Dahmer when that whole thing came out – do you think that would be a problem?

“Listen, anytime a doppelganger is tied to a less-than-desirable, it’s never a good situation. But it doesn’t matter to me. I could care less.”

Asked by the Post what bothers him most about having the same name as the infamous sex trafficker, he replied: “People like you calling me to ask me these questions. Don’t take that the wrong way, but you couldn’t understand that – otherwise it doesn’t bother me in the least.”

As for the Democrat, Crockett has risen to prominence over the last two years as one of her party’s most frank and outspoken representatives but has attracted flack from MAGA and President Donald Trump in the process, with the latter routinely referring to her as “low IQ.”

On Wednesday, Trump signed a bill ordering the Department of Justice to release its files on the pedophile after the House of Representatives and Senate moved swiftly to pass it, giving the DOJ 30 days to make the potentially-explosive documents public.