FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino appeared on Fox News Sunday to talk about how they’re radically transforming the law enforcement agency. There were a lot of the things you’d expect, including ridiculous statements about January 6th and reference to the 2020 election as “rigged.” But there was one topic from Sunday’s interview that really pissed off the MAGA crowd: Patel and Bongino both said that Jeffrey Epstein did, in fact, kill himself.
Epstein, the financier and child sex offender, was found dead in his jail cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Brooklyn, New York, on August 10, 2019. Epstein was connected to a number of high-profile figures, including President Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew, and Epstein even called President Donald Trump his “closest friend,” according to journalist Michael Wolff. It was those powerful connections that immediately made people suspicious when Epstein’s death was ruled a suicide. The mantra “Epstein didn’t kill himself” was incredibly common, especially among people who like to ignore Trump’s connections to Epstein and only focus on Democrats like Bill Clinton.
But two of Trump’s most trusted henchmen are now insisting Epstein really did kill himself, even after they spent years claiming Epstein had been murdered before he could expose countless Democrats as pedophiles. And MAGA fans who once saw Patel and Bongino as allies are starting to turn on them.
Patel and Bongino sat down for a joint interview on Sunday with Maria Bartiromo, the host of Sunday Morning Futures, where they made their comments about Epstein, however sheepishly.
“You said Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide. People don’t believe it,” Bartiromo said, referring to recent testimony Patel gave to Congress.
“Well, I mean, listen, they have a right to their opinion, but 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,” Patel said, sporting his trademark deer-in-the-headlights look.
Bongino followed up after Patel, without providing any details but agreeing with Patel’s assessment. “He killed himself. Again, you want me to… I’ve seen the whole file. He killed himself,” Bongino said.
Bartiromo then moved on without asking any further questions, at least none that made it into the final edit of the show.
All of this really set off the MAGA folks on social media. The Quartering, a popular far-right account on X, wrote that Patel and Bongino’s “‘trust us’ nonsense is WILD after everything they have both said.”
“For YEARS Kash Patel & Dan Bongino have called people ‘crazy to believe Epstein killed himself’ and now that they’ve been in the club for about 40 seconds they release a joint statement like it’s open and shut, nothing weird at all about it at all, he 100% did end his own life..” the account wrote Sunday.
Alex Jones, arguably the most popular conspiracy theorist on the internet today, also chimed in about the interview. “Overall, I think Kash Patel and Dan Bongino are doing a great job, but on this claim that Epstein’s death is not a cover-up I call bullshit,” Jones wrote.
Jones went on to suggest there was some kind of high-level coverup involving former FBI Director James Comey, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Barack and Michelle Obama.
“James Comey just sent out a dogwhistle to have our sitting president assassinated,” Jones wrote on X. “Why do you think he would do that? What is Comey, the Clintons, and the Obamas all have to hide? Are you paying attention to Trump’s recent posts? Are you starting to connect the dots? Remember, there are no coincidences.”
Again, whenever far-right commentators talk about Epstein, they almost always ignore President Trump’s friendship with the sex offender. Epstein even told journalist Michael Wolff back in 2018 that there are photos of Trump with “young girls” who are “topless” sitting in the president’s lap. For some reason, Wolff didn’t share audio recordings of his interviews with Epstein until 2024, which made people doubt their authenticity. But there are no obvious signs that the interviews are fake, and you can hear them for yourself online at The Daily Beast.
Whatever you think of whether Epstein really did kill himself, it’s fascinating to watch guys like Bongino and Patel sit there and insist something that’s the complete opposite of what they were saying over the past few years. But it seems likely, given the way that Patel and Bongino are talking, that high-level recriminations are coming for all sorts of fake non-crimes, and it’s likely to appease all the people who are upset about the Epstein stuff.
The Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General released an independent 128-page report in June 2023 which concluded Epstein did really kill himself. But people across the political spectrum have remained skeptical.
Patel said he’s planning to move 1,500 FBI agents out of Washington, D.C., pushing them out to field offices across the country with a large concentration in Alabama. But the FBI Director didn’t address the obvious questions any normal person would have, such as, do these FBI agents want to move to places like Alabama if they’ve already set up their lives in Washington, D.C.?
Bartiromo pushed Patel during the interview on why there hadn’t been more prosecutions of people who opposed Trump, and the FBI Director said that he’s hampered by federal statute of limitations that make it difficult. Bongino got defensive about the line of questions, saying there were lots of other issues the FBI is dealing with, rather humorously saying, “you want New York to go boom? D.C. to go boom?”
Patel did suggest that newer crimes would be pursued, something that may perhaps come into play if authorities decide to go after James Comey, the former FBI Director that fired by Trump in 2017. Comey wrote an Instagram post that read “86 47” last week, kicking off a debate about the meaning of “86,” which can be interpreted as either “get rid of,” or, less commonly, to kill. The Secret Service has reportedly opened an investigation into Comey.
Patel said there would be a “wave of transparency” coming, prompting Bartiromo to ask what he means. Patel responded “just give us about a week or two.” But whatever’s coming in a week or two is unlikely to satisfy the MAGA diehards who thought these guys were going to prove their darkest conspiracy theories true.