By Emmanuel Bobby
Former FBI co-deputy director Dan Bongino returned to podcasting Monday with a forceful defense of the bureau’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, sharp attacks on his critics and a wide-ranging interview with President Donald Trump.
“It’s been a crazy year,” Bongino said, reflecting on his time as the FBI’s No. 2 official under Director Kash Patel. He described the review of the Epstein files as a “level 10 problem,” saying there was no outcome that would satisfy everyone.
“It was never going to please everyone,” Bongino said.
Bongino, who officially stepped down last month, said he had always planned to serve only one year at the FBI and that he intends to use his podcast to push back against what he called “grifters” trying to divide the MAGA movement.
“This movement has been hijacked by doomers,” he said.
During the interview, Trump suggested Bongino might be more valuable as a prominent media voice than as a government official.
“I’m very torn,” Trump said. “I think maybe, maybe I’d rather have you where you are, because it, you know, very few people can do what you do.”
Bongino’s appointment to the FBI had been controversial. The role has traditionally been filled by career agents overseeing daily operations across the bureau’s field offices. Bongino, a pro-Trump podcaster and former Secret Service agent, had never worked at the FBI and had repeatedly criticized it on his show as part of the “deep state.”
“The FBI has totally and completely failed America,” Bongino said in a June 2024 podcast episode. “It kills me to have to tell you that you can’t trust these people.”
After the FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Bongino told “Fox and Friends” that the agency “needs to be disbanded.”
He also promoted numerous conspiracy theories on his podcast, including those involving Epstein, the politically connected financier who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Although investigators concluded Epstein died by suicide, Bongino repeatedly suggested he was killed.
In a January 2024 episode, Bongino played a clip of a journalist who said she was “100%” convinced Epstein was murdered because he had blackmailed powerful people.
“Maybe because I was an investigator before, it’s, like, I’m amazed at how few people are putting 2 and 2 together,” Bongino said at the time.
Two weeks before Trump named him co-deputy director of the FBI, Bongino vowed he would not let claims about Epstein using tapes for blackmail “ever go.”
By May, however, Bongino backed away from the murder claim, telling Fox News that video footage from Epstein’s jail cell showed he was alone and that no one else entered. That video was released publicly in July, along with an unsigned joint FBI–Justice Department memo stating that an “exhaustive” review of the Epstein case found no basis for additional criminal charges and that no further information would be released.
“I wanted to see the files, folks. I said don’t let it go. I meant it,” Bongino said on his podcast Monday. “We got elected. We looked at it. What we thought was going to be in there wasn’t in there.”
He said releasing more information posed serious problems and that many claims were based on “double or triple hearsay.” He pointed to court dockets released Friday under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, saying they included a large number of unverified tips.
Bongino also defended Patel’s overhaul of the FBI and urged Trump supporters to be patient.
“Good cases, good police work and personnel changes take time,” he said, without naming specific cases. Trump has complained publicly about what he sees as slow progress against his political opponents.
“When we got into the FBI, Kash and I, we found there were two FBIs,” Bongino said — one he described as “completely weaponized,” focused on political targeting, and another made up of agents who wanted to pursue traditional law enforcement work.
“The problem was finding who was in each group,” he said, adding that internal leakers had “destroyed the place” and had also tried to undermine him and Patel.
Bongino also defended his and Patel’s use of social media while leading the bureau. Patel has faced criticism for sharing premature information about investigations, and former FBI officials have said the two spent time discussing potential social media posts during active cases.
“Of course we’re going to use it to tell the taxpayer here what’s going on,” Bongino said.
Trump joined the podcast near the end of the episode.
“I was very unhappy when you left the FBI, but I was very happy that you have your show, which does so good,” Trump said.