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Trump allies turn on FBI’s Patel and Bongino

A Trump-aligned advocacy group warned that patience was growing thin with the two podcasters-turned-lawmen.

By Giselle Ruhiyyih Ewing

Longtime allies of President Donald Trump are souring on his picks to lead the FBI, suggesting that Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino are “hostages of the deep state” over their handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case.

Conservative group Judicial Watch posted a scathing rebuke of Patel and Bongino on Wednesday, eviscerating the director and his deputy for their lack of “transparency and failure to mount significant investigations” at the agency. The group slammed the FBI’s lack of earth-shattering revelations in the long-promised Epstein files, which right-wing personalities had anticipated as unveiling a list of people connected to the convicted sex offender.

“Conservative insiders are alarmed by mounting signs that Patel and Bongino have been taken hostage by the Deep State consensus and are failing to bring meaningful change to the FBI,” Judicial Watch author Micah Morrison wrote, highlighting the lack of a big Epstein file reveal as evidence that the agency heads are failing in their promised mission.

Judicial Watch, headed by Trump ally Tom Fitton, has a long history of attacking the federal government for what it claims is pervasive corruption. Its attempted probes into the so-called deep state have included lawsuits over Hillary Clinton’s emails and Hunter Biden’s laptops, drawing encouragement from Trump, who has quoted Fitton and boosted his content.

Patel and Bongino began to fall out of favor with some outside allies and angered right-wing conspiracy theorists in May after unequivocally telling Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo that Epstein took his own life, quashing theories that he was murdered — even though they themselves had pushed those theories before getting into office.

“Listen, they have a right to their opinion,” Patel said, “But you know a suicide when you see one, and that’s what that was.”

Bongino, who once had promoted fringe theories around Epstein’s death, agreed.

“He killed himself,” the deputy director said. “I’ve seen the whole file. He killed himself.”

Patel also had a lengthy back-and-forth with podcaster Joe Rogan last week about Epstein.

“Do you think that myself, Bongino, and others would participate in hiding information about Epstein’s grotesque activities?” Patel told Rogan. “The problem is there’s been like 15 years of people coming in and creating fictions about this that doesn’t exist.”

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment on Judicial Watch’s Wednesday attack.

The FBI officials’ confirmation that Epstein’s death was a suicide came not only as a betrayal to the cause for Epstein truthers, but also as a fresh blow after the anticlimactic release of a set of files on the billionaire sex offender in the winter failed to live up to expectations for those who have insisted there was a government coverup.

The Justice Department released a batch of the files after considerable fanfare in February, bestowing binders with “Phase 1” of the Epstein files upon a group of conservative online influencers at the White House before releasing them publicly the following day.

But the binders contained little new information, let alone major bombshells.

In response, Attorney General Pam Bondi cast blame on the FBI, claiming that the agency was withholding thousands of pages of the files.

After multiple requests to release the complete files, Judicial Watch sued the Justice Department for the records in April.

In its Wednesday tirade against the FBI heads, the conservative group also slammed Patel over reports of his “jet-setting lifestyle,” accusing the FBI director of falling down on the job.

But according to Bongino, life at Trump’s FBI is no walk in the park. The deputy director gave an emotional interview on Fox News at the end of May, lamenting how challenging the role in the administration has been.

“I gave up everything for this,” Bongino told Fox and Friends at the time. “I stare at these four walls all day in D.C. by myself, divorced from my wife — not divorced but I mean separated divorced,” he added.