Update: Oh, darn it all, we might lose Dan Bongino
Bondi and Patel could be out of a job soon, too, courtesy of Trump's old pal Jeffrey Epstein
By Sam Bellamy
Internal MAGA squabbles are always entertaining, but the ongoing fight between Attorney General Pam Bondi and her FBI colleagues Kash Patel and Dan Bongino is especially fun. There’s not a genuinely held principle among the three of them, though they love to pretend they’re united in some bizarro League of Justice.
Bongino and Bondi were reportedly in a shouting match this week about her recent memo indicating there is no Jeffrey Epstein client list, no indication he was murdered and no need to release any more documents from the Justice Department’s files. This is all a direct contradiction of her repeated announcements that more files would be forthcoming.
Axios and others reported that Bongino, who’s somehow our assistant FBI director, didn’t go to work Friday and is contemplating resigning if Bondi doesn’t quit or get fired. Fox News reported that he’s actually been absent since Wednesday.
The fight apparently centered in part on a jailhouse video of Epstein’s cell that was released with the memo, in hopes of quieting MAGA cult members upset by what they see as a Trump administration coverup of who’s on that client list.
Trump, who was a longtime friend of Epstein before what he describes as a falling out, lashed out at a reporter asking about Bondi’s memo at a Cabinet meeting this week. (The vile Bill O’Reilly says Trump once told him a lot of “innocent” people would be harmed if a list of Epstein’s visitors were released because there’s no context for the visits.)
“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for years,” Trump snapped, adding, “Are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable.”
Apparently unbeknownst to Bondi before the video’s release, the footage is missing one minute because — she said at that Cabinet meeting — the camera system was undergoing its daily maintenance reboot at that time. Axios reported that Bongino is being blamed for not disclosing the missing minute when he gave it to the Justice Department.
According to Axios, Bongino also “was confronted about a NewsNation article that said he and Patel wanted more information released about Epstein earlier, but were held back. Bongino denied leaking that idea.”
As detailed in the earlier Fight the Fire piece below and the video clip attached here, Bongino and Patel had already said publicly that Epstein committed suicide — a reversal of their podcast days when they alleged sinister forces, probably Bill and Hillary Clinton, were behind his death.
“The fact is, Dan was for releasing the information with the video and had no problem until he got heat online,” a senior administration official told Axios. “Bongino found the video with the missing minute. He vouched for it after a 'thorough review,' he said, and he thought this would end the matter. When that didn't work, he lost his mind and ran out of D.C.”
Bongino has no business anywhere near a position of responsibility in the government, and his departure would be cause for celebration. If Patel and Bondi also resigned or were fired, no one would miss them either — although Trump could no doubt find even worse candidates to replace them if Republicans in Congress don’t intervene.
The sound of sharpening axes is almost always in the background when Trump is befouling the Oval Office, but the calls for Bondi to be cut loose are getting a bit louder.
The professional Muslim hater Laura Loomer, accurately described by Politico as a “Trump whisperer,” is pushing for Bondi’s ouster.
“Pam Blondi is very damaging to President Trump’s image. She drags the administration down and the base doesn’t want her as AG,” Loomer wrote on X. “She is harming Trump’s administration and she’s embarrassing all of his staff and advisors by creating a PR crisis for them. It’s incredibly unfair to President Trump and his team.”
Loomer, as Politico notes, holds significant influence over the MAGA cult and Trump, who’s spoken admirably of her ability to “Loomer” people she doesn’t like and drive them from power. In fact, she claims she got Trump to fire several members of the National Security Council earlier this year, alleging they weren’t sufficiently loyal to His Highness.
Administration officials are, of course, publicly denying there’s any disarray whatsoever at the FBI and Justice Department.
In a post Friday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote, “The suggestion by anyone that there was any daylight between the FBI and DOJ leadership on this memo’s composition and release is patently false.”
The administration’s Axis Sally, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, declared, “The continued fixation on sowing division in President Trump's Cabinet is baseless and unfounded in reality.”
This can only mean one thing: It’s on. Enjoy.
The following piece, headlined “Have Patel and Bongino joined the Deep State?/MAGA turns on the FBI tough guys after they say Jeffrey Epstein killed himself,” appeared May 20.
By Sam Bellamy
America’s new dynamic duo at the FBI, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, have dined for years on the wildest of conspiracy theories, washed down with tankards of liberal tears. But now, oddly, they’re pushing themselves away from the table and refusing to partake in a favorite MAGA dish – Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in his prison cell.
The trouble is that the many in the MAGA cult – and perhaps Donald Trump himself – aren’t ready to quit feasting.
In the six years since authorities said Epstein hanged himself in a Manhattan jail cell, Patel and Bongino have fueled the MAGA belief that Democrats – Hillary and Bill Clinton, specifically – murdered him because they didn’t want the notorious sex trafficker to testify against Bill.
In a pre-recorded interview Sunday morning on Fox News, Patel and Bongino told Trump lackey Maria Bartiromo that it just ain’t so.
“As someone who has worked as a public defender, as a prosecutor who's been in that prison system, who's been in the Metropolitan Detention Center, who's been in segregated housing, you know a suicide when you see one, and that's what that was,” FBI Director Patel said.
"He killed himself. I’ve seen the whole file. He killed himself," Deputy Director Bongino added.
Neither comment was well-received in MAGA world. Social media lit up Sunday with posts by angry Trumpers accusing Patel and Bongino of betraying the president and taking bribes to lie about what really happened to Epstein. Alex Jones, who made a fortune harassing the parents of the children slain at Sandy Hook, dismissed the two men’s comments as “bullshit.”
Both Patel and Bongino have told vastly different tales about Epstein in the past.
Patel, a QAnon celebrity, repeatedly peddled conspiracies about Democratic involvement in child trafficking on his podcast, a wild tale often intertwined with the Epstein story. Bongino has said previously that the Clintons “are knee deep in involvement with Jeffrey Epstein and no one can figure out what the level of entanglement is.”
Trump, likewise, has opined that Epstein was killed. He retweeted messages – from completely unknowledgeable people, of course – implying that the Clintons were responsible. He continued do so even after his then-Attorney General William Barr, at his request, reviewed the evidence and concluded that Epstein had killed himself.
It’s puzzling that Patel and Bongino are now willing to let go of what, for them, has been a profitable conspiracy theory. Neither man, after all, has shown much interest in impartiality or the truth. Why start now?
Some media pundits theorize that the two are finally realizing that they have a big government agency to run and that they can’t spend all their time spouting nonsense. But that lesson has been lost on their boss, who runs the entire government, so it seems unlikely they’re feeling the need to grow into their jobs either.
In fact, in the interview with Bartimoro, Patel and Bongino continued to press the lie that the Jan. 6 riot was instigated not by Trump supporters but deep-state operatives within the government out to get Trump.
We’ve heard all of this before, and there’s not a whit of evidence to back up such claims. Nevertheless, Patel and Bongino teased during the interview that they’ve turned up such evidence and will release it soon.
Whatever they produce – if they produce anything – is certain to be underwhelming and at least a mile from the truth.
What’s not certain is that Trump himself is willing to give up on the Epstein conspiracy, despite the fact that every time he mentions it, he draws attention to his long friendship with his fellow sex offender.
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York Magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
At this writing, Trump has not commented on the Patel-Bongino interview. But on Saturday, after their interview had been recorded, he shared on Truth Social an old video alleging that the Clintons murdered numerous people, including John F. Kennedy Jr. (Hillary didn’t want him running for a U.S. Senate she wanted, you see) and young Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich.
The latter man was killed in a robbery, police concluded, but Fox News spread a lie that Rich had leaked dirt on the Clintons and was likely killed for it. The lying ended when Fox was forced to apologize to the Rich family and pay an undisclosed settlement to end their lawsuit against the network.
Yet Trump dredged up all of that again Saturday, posting a video rehashing the old allegations, with the headline, “THE VIDEO HILLARY CLINTON DOES NOT WANT YOU TO SEE.”
The video predates Epstein’s death, but it leaves little doubt that if someone, somewhere, died mysteriously, the Clintons were behind it.
Wingnut and Trump groupie Laura Loomer was ecstatic about the post, saying, “Trump took a blow torch to Hillary Clinton” and adding, “Isn’t it weird how so many people who surround the Clintons have been found dead, been murdered or died from ‘suicide’?”
At a press briefing Monday, a reporter with a conservative website called Zero Hedge called Epstein’s death “the most famous Clinton-related death” and, citing Trump’s post, asked Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt when the administration planned to release more files on Epstein’s case.
“I know the attorney general has committed to releasing those files. I would defer you to the Department of Justice on her timeline,” she responded. “But, when she’s made a promise in the past, she has kept it, and I’m certain that she will in this case as well.”
In the video below, you can listen to Patel and Bongino talk about all the wondrous things they’re doing at the FBI. Listening to the entirety would be nauseating, but please do catch the hilarious portion at the 10:35 mark, where Bongino does his best Clint Eastwood act.
Does the swamp ever take an L?