Topline
President Donald Trump praised FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino amid criticism from his base that his administration over-promised revelations about Jeffrey Epstein, after announcing Monday no new information would be released.
Kash Patel, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, attends the funeral of former NYPD … More
Key Facts
Trump said in a Monday Truth Social post the FBI “is back to the basics” under Patel and Bongino and instructed them to “keep it up” amid blowback from his base after the Justice Department and the FBI released a memo saying there is no Epstein “client list,” despite both Patel and Bongino suggesting the federal government was withholding information on Epstein for years (Trump did not mention Epstein in his post).
Bongino told his podcast audience in 2023: “Listen, that Jeffrey Epstein story is a big deal, please do not let that story go. Keep your eye on this” and questioned “what the hell are they hiding with Jeffrey Epstein?” without specifying who “they” are.
Bongino also proliferated the conspiracy theory that Epstein is “an intelligence asset for people in the Middle East,” during a 2023 appearance on right-wing podcaster Tim Pool’s “Timcast IRL,” alleging an unnamed Fox reporter shared the information with him.
Bongino questioned in the podcast with Pool whether Middle Eastern countries “may have had [Epstein’s] plane wired up and they’re the ones who have all this stuff,” which he suggested was being used to blackmail American “power players” who were Epstein’s clientele.
In a cryptic X post in April, Bongino also wrote “just because you don’t immediately see it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening,” though it was unclear what he was referring to.
Patel, meanwhile, suggested to right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson in December 2023 Congress was blocking the purported list “because of who’s on that list,” telling Johnson “you don’t think that Bill Gates is lobbying Congress night and day to prevent the disclosure of that list?” while deriding House Republicans for allegedly failing to release the list: “put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are.”
In November, days before Trump was elected, Patel again appeared on the Benny Johnson podcast and said Trump is going to “maybe” release the “Epstein list.”
News Peg
The FBI and the Justice Department published a memo Monday that states no additional information on its investigation into Epstein will be released. The memo concluded Epstein committed suicide in his Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 and that no so-called Epstein List of his purported clients exists.
Chief Critic
President of the conservative Judicial Watch movement Tom Fitton told Steve Bannon on Monday “I don’t even think the Biden administration would have written anything like this. I just don’t think they could have thought they could get away with it. And I gotta wonder what is going on at the leadership of the Justice Department and the FBI.”
Tangent
The White House on Monday walked back Attorney General Pam Bondi’s statements earlier this year that the alleged Epstein client list was on her desk. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Bondi was referring to the entirety of the government documents on the investigation when she was asked by Fox News earlier this year if the Justice Department would release a “list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients,” to which she replied “it’s sitting on my desk right now to review.”
Key Background
The Trump administration is widely viewed to have fallen short of its promises to reveal new information about Epstein that right-wing conspiracists have long speculated the Biden administration was hiding. Bongino and Patel both acknowledged in a Fox News interview in May they support the official narrative that Epstein killed himself, dismissing conspiracy theories, and igniting blowback on the right.
Further Reading
Here’s Why The ‘Epstein List’ Still Haunts The Trump White House (Forbes)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2025/07/08/heres-how-fbis-kash-patel-and-dan-bongino-fueled-right-wing-hopes-for-bombshell-epstein-revelations/