The two main leaders of the FBI said in interviews in Fox News that the deceased financial and sexual offender convicted Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide, and promised to launch a video of surveillance of the federal prison in New York City, where Epstein was found dead.
The officials of the first Trump administration ruled that Epstein’s death in 2019 was a suicide. But it has remained the subject of conspiracy theories that suggest that it was killed due to its connections with celebrities and high profile politicians.
The deputy director of the FBI, Dan Bongino, former Pro-Trump podcaster, said Thursday morning in Fox News that the video showed that no one entered or approached Epstein’s cell at the time of his suicide. Bongino also said that no forensic evidence had been found to suggest that another person was present.
“There is no DNA, there is no audio, there are no digital footprints, there are no suspects, there are no accomplices, there are no advice, there is nothing,” said Bongino, who asked the public members to share evidence of irregularities in the case. “If you have it, I’m happy to see it.”
“There is a clear video like the day,” he added. “He is the only person there and the only person who comes out. You can see him.”
In a separate interview on Wednesday night in Fox News, the director of the FBI, Kash Patel, also said that Epstein had died for suicide, and promised to publish additional information about the case.
“We are diligently working on that,” Patel said. “You need time to spend years of research.”
Past Epstein Conspiracy Claims
Before Bongino became the deputy director of the FBI, he repeatedly promoted conspiracy theories about Epstein’s death.
In a podcast on January 4, 2024, Bongino touched a clip in which a journalist said he was “100%” convinced that Epstein was killed “because he made his whole life blackmail.” Bongino told his listeners that he had heard the same statements as another journalist and were “super important.”
“This is where I am very angry with the media,” Bongino said later in the podcast, arguing that journalists had “done almost as not, maybe because he was a researcher before, it’s like, I’m surprised how few people are gathering two and two.”
Approximately two weeks before Trump called the deputy director of Bongino FBI, Bongino spoke about Epstein. He said again that a journalist had told him about the existence of tapes that Epstein used to blackmail powerful people and then mentioned an accusation he had heard involving Bill Clinton.
“I’m never going to let this story go,” Bongino promised on February 10. “I’m never letting go.”
For years before assuming the position, Patel and Bongino also affirmed that the Biden administration and the corrupt actors of the “deep state” had “armed” the FBI against Donald Trump.
They accused the office of covering what he knew about the pumps of pipes placed outside the offices of the Republican and Democratic National Committees in Washington before the attack of January 6, 2021 against the United States Capitol. They suggested that the FBI agents helped light the disturbance of the Capitol. And they said that the FBI agents committed crimes and tried to “overthrow” Trump.
But a large number of Trump supporters who believe that these statements publicly ask: why are Patel and Bongino not arresting and prosecuting people that Patel described “government gangsters”?
An FBI spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
In his “Fox & Friends” interview, Bongino also said that the work was affecting his family. “The greatest lifestyle change is in terms of family,” he said.
“It was a lot, and it has been difficult for the family. People ask all the time, do you like it? No. I don’t,” Bongino said. “But the president did not ask me to do this to like it, nobody likes to enter an organization like that and have to make great changes.”
Last weekend, Bongino announced in X that the FBI is reexamining multiple cases of the Biden era, including the 2021 pipe pumps in the DNC and the RNC, the 2022 filtration of the Dobbs decision of the Supreme Court that annulled ROE V. Wade and a small cocaine bag that was found in the White House in 2023.
On Thursday, Bongino said the FBI is close to solving one of the three cases, without saying which.
“We have a fascinating advice in one of these cases, one of the three,” he said. “We are going to execute it. We are not going to be able to do that public, obviously, immediately, because we have to make sure.”
Focus on the pipe pump box
Three weeks before the Trump administration assumed the position, the FBI launched what it said it was a new video of the masked person who planted bombs outside the Republican and Democratic headquarters in Washington. But FBI officials said they had not identified a suspect or even determined with certainty if the figure was a man or a woman.
Before being appointed deputy director of the FBI, Bongino accused the FBI of lying about that person in one of his podcasts. “I think the FBI knows the identity of this pipeline of pipe on January 6, four years ago, and it simply does not mean because it was an internal job,” he said.
In an interview with the theoretical conspiracy and political commentator Julie Kelly, Bongino said: “I am convinced that the person who planted that pipe bomb in the DNC on January 6 was there to create a false murder attempt because they needed to prevent Republicans from interrogating a national television audience which happened in the 2020 elections.”
Patel also said in his Fox News interview on Wednesday that the FBI has new potential customers in the case of Pipe Bomb. He accused the administration of having “slow” the investigation, but did not offer specific examples.
Bongino defended the reopening of research on who left a small cocaine bag in the White House during the Biden administration. Bongino, a former secret service agent, argued that the investigation was relaunched for security reasons, not to obtain political points.
“He was a secret service agent. A potentially dangerous material arrived at the White House,” he said in Fox News. “Nobody seems to know how it came there, and nobody seemed to investigate it completely … What planet we live on where it is not of public interest?”
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or send a text message to 988, or go to 988lifeline.orgto achieve the suicide and crisis life line. You can also call the network, previously known as the National Life of Suicide Prevention, to 800-273-8255or visit Speakingofsuicide.com/resources.
