FBI leaders under pressure from MAGA voters to act on their corruption claims
For years, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino have said the Biden administration and corrupt “deep state” actors “weaponized” the FBI against Donald Trump.
They accused the bureau of covering up what it knew about pipe bombs placed before the Jan. 6 attack. They suggested that FBI operatives helped ignite the Capitol riot. They said FBI agents committed crimes and tried to “overthrow” Trump.
When Patel and Bongino did that, they weren’t just saying they disagreed with FBI investigative or prosecution decisions. They were accusing people of federal crimes. It would be illegal to investigate and prosecute someone because you didn’t like their political beliefs, which is what they are saying happened. And there is no evidence to support that.
Now that the two men lead the FBI, Director Patel and Deputy Director Bongino find themselves in an awkward position. Large numbers of Trump supporters still believe all those things, and some are publicly asking: Why haven’t Bongino and Patel exposed the “truth” about the “deep state” they promised? Why isn’t the Trump administration arresting and prosecuting the people Patel labeled “government gangsters”?
Since they took office, the two men have apparently sought to walk a careful line. They are backtracking on — or have stopped talking about — some of their debunked claims while promising to release documents they say will shed new light on others, including their assertions of FBI wrongdoing in the Russia and Jan. 6 investigations.
Their approach has alienated a segment of MAGA voters.
“Soup salad from Kash and Dan,” MAGA podcaster Joe Oltmann said Monday on X, referring to an interview the pair did that aired over the weekend on Fox Business. “WTH is happening and why does it feel same same is happening as say, Comey in the position?”
Current and former FBI officials say what Patel and Bongino are experiencing is the difference between playing the role of a partisan conspiracy theorist and running a law enforcement agency with 38,000 employees.
The FBI declined to comment.
“Once they got to the FBI, I’m sure they found that it wasn’t full of deep state operators looking to undermine our democracy,” said Christopher O’Leary, a former senior FBI agent. “Quite the opposite — the FBI ranks are full of dedicated agents and intelligence professionals who are committed to the rule of law and protecting the Constitution. Which, unfortunately for them, is inconsistent with many of the conspiracies and disinformation that they were perpetuating in their prior lives.”
Fox Business interview
The awkwardness was on display in the Fox Business interview, conducted by Maria Bartiromo, who over the years has joined Patel and Bongino in saying the FBI had been weaponized.
Bartiromo grilled Patel, for example, about why former FBI officials who supervised the investigation into the Trump campaign’s dealings with Russia haven’t been prosecuted for their alleged misdeeds.
“Come on, Director, with all due respect, we’ve been talking about this for a long time, and I’ve been demanding accountability for many, many years,” Bartiromo said. “Comey, Strzok and the rest, they’ve got TV shows, they’ve got media platforms. They’re fine. There’s been no accountability.”
She was referring to former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired in 2017, and former FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was fired from the FBI in 2018 after texts showing his deep political and personal animus to Trump surfaced. Both men played roles in the Russia investigation.
Patel responded that the statute of limitations had passed. “Well, look, it’s a fair criticism, but what I will tell people is we weren’t here in the FBI in the last five years when we had statute of limitations that were still in play where we could have investigated criminal conduct.
“What we can do now is continue to put out the documents and the information that these people withheld from the American public,” he added. “He and I just found out more last week, and we’re continuing to work with Congress to put those documents out.”
In fact, John Durham, a special counsel appointed by the first Trump administration, spent three years investigating the claims of criminality by Comey, Strzok and other senior FBI officials but never charged them with crimes. Durham indicted a rank-and-file FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to altering an email on a surveillance warrant application. Two other people accused of lying to the FBI were acquitted at trial.
Releasing FBI documents
Promises to release FBI documents appear to be part of Patel and Bongino’s strategy to appease MAGA conspiracy theorists while supervising thousands of FBI agents who believe the conspiracy theories are false and destructive.
Patel said in the Fox Business interview that his predecessors at the FBI “withheld and hid documentation and put it in rooms where people weren’t supposed to look, and it’s a good thing we’re here now to clean it up, and you’re about to see a wave of transparency. Just give us about a week or two.”
Patel has also promised to release a trove of files related to the FBI’s Jan. 6 investigation. Bongino and Patel both have hinted that they believe the FBI played a role in encouraging the rioters.
Patel was an early proponent of the “fed-surrection” conspiracy theory that undercover FBI agents instigated the Capitol riot to smear the MAGA movement. “When did the FBI put those guys in, and where?” Patel asked on a 2022 episode of his online show, “Kash’s Corner.” “And did those confidential human sources engage people who are not going to conduct criminal activity and convince them to do so?”
But now Bongino appears to be adopting a more nuanced view. “We dug far and wide to find it, and I’m pretty sure now we have a conclusive, definitive answer,” Bongino said, promising a release of new documents.
But, he added, he wanted to make sure the public understands that “there’s a difference between agents and assets. And I just hope when people put that information out there, they make the distinction.”
He appeared to be referring to an exhaustive Justice Department inspector general’s report published in December that concluded no undercover FBI employees were at the Jan. 6 riot. The report found that 26 “confidential human sources” were in Washington to be part of the protests but that none were authorized to enter the Capitol. Four did so anyway, the report found.
Bongino’s emphasis on the difference between “agents” and “assets” suggested that the information the FBI is releasing is consistent with the inspector general’s findings.
The Epstein files
Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi have also promised to release more new files about the disgraced financier and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The existence of an Epstein client list that will expose Democratic politicians remains widely believed in pro-Trump circles. But officials close to the investigation say no such client list exists.
Patel and Bondi haven’t said one does, but they have promised new files that will provide new details.
Some in MAGA world are getting restless. “Pam Bondi and Kash Patel are protecting pedophiles identities at this point,” Trump supporter Evan Kilgore said on X, where he has more than 115,000 followers.
In the Fox Business interview, Patel and Bongino were unequivocal in asserting that the evidence they have seen shows that Epstein did kill himself in jail in 2019, despite widespread doubts about that official story.
“You said Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide,” Bartiromo said. “People don’t believe it.”
Patel said: “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.”
Bongino added: “I’ve seen the whole file. He killed himself.”
A MAGA supporter responded by calling Bongino a “Deep State traitor” on Truth Social.
Unsolved pipe bomb case
Patel and Bongino never fully embraced the conspiracy theory that Epstein was murdered, but the two men, particularly Bongino, have adopted what law enforcement officials say is an equally outlandish notion: the idea that the FBI secretly knows who planted pipe bombs in Washington hours before the Jan. 6 attack.
In January, the FBI released what it said was new video of the masked person planting bombs outside the Republican and Democratic headquarters in Washington. But FBI officials said they hadn’t identified a suspect or even determined for certain whether the figure was a man or a woman.
Weeks before he was named deputy FBI director, Bongino accused the FBI of lying about the person on a podcast. “I believe the FBI knows the identity of this pipe bomber on January 6th, four years ago, and just doesn’t want to tell us because it was an inside job,” he said.
In an interview with conspiracy theorist and political commentator Julie Kelly, Bongino said, “I’m convinced the person who planted that pipe bomb at the DNC on January 6th was there to create a fake assassination attempt because they needed to stop Republicans from questioning in front of a national TV audience what happened in the 2020 election.”
Patel also espoused that view, saying in January that the pipe bomb could be a “government ruse” planted by a “rogue FBI source.”
Current and former FBI officials say there is no evidence to support any of those allegations.
In an interview last week with Tucker Carlson, the former acting U.S. attorney in Washington, Ed Martin, accused Bongino of ordering that the FBI personnel investigating the pipe bomb case be replaced.
In the Fox Business interview, Bongino said the public needs the FBI to “get to the bottom” of the pipe bomber case. He didn’t repeat his claim that the FBI knows who planted the bombs.