The FBI’s top two leaders said in interviews on Fox News that the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide, and they promised to release a surveillance video from the federal jail in New York City where Epstein was found dead.
Officials in the first Trump administration ruled that Epstein’s death in 2019 was a suicide. But it has remained the subject of conspiracy theories suggesting he was murdered because of his connections to high-profile celebrities and politicians.
Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, a former pro-Trump podcaster, said Thursday morning on Fox News that the video showed that no one entered or approached Epstein’s cell at the time of his suicide. Bongino also said no forensic evidence had been found suggesting that another person was present.
“There’s no DNA, there’s no audio, there’s no fingerprints, there’s no suspects, there’s no accomplices, there’s no tips, there is nothing,” said Bongino, who asked members of the public to share any evidence of wrongdoing in the case. “If you have it, I’m happy to see it.”
“There’s video clear as day,” he added. “He’s the only person in there and the only person coming out. You can see it.”
In a separate interview Wednesday night on Fox News, FBI Director Kash Patel also said Epstein had died by suicide, and he promised to release additional information about the case.
“We are diligently working on that,” Patel said. “It takes time to go through years of investigations.”
Past Epstein conspiracy claims
Before Bongino became deputy FBI director, he repeatedly promoted conspiracy theories about Epstein’s death.
In a Jan. 4, 2024, podcast, Bongino played a clip in which a journalist said she was “100%” convinced that Epstein was killed “because he made his whole living blackmailing people.” Bongino told his listeners that he’d heard the same claims from another reporter and that they were “super important.”
“This is where I get really upset at the media,” Bongino said later in the podcast, contending that reporters had “done almost like no — maybe because I was an investigator before, it’s like, I’m amazed at how few people are putting two and two together.”
Roughly two weeks before Trump named Bongino FBI deputy director, Bongino spoke again about Epstein. He said again that a reporter had told him about the existence of tapes that Epstein used to blackmail powerful people and then mentioned an allegation he’d heard involving Bill Clinton.
“I’m not ever gonna let this story go,” Bongino promised on Feb. 10. “I’m not letting it go ever.”
For years before they took office, Patel and Bongino also claimed that the Biden administration and corrupt “deep state” actors had “weaponized” the FBI against Donald Trump.
They accused the bureau of covering up what it knew about pipe bombs placed outside the offices of the Republican and Democratic national committees in Washington before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S Capitol. They suggested that FBI operatives helped ignite the Capitol riot. And they said FBI agents committed crimes and tried to “overthrow” Trump.
But large numbers of Trump supporters who believe those claims are publicly asking: Why aren’t Patel and Bongino arresting and prosecuting the people Patel labeled “government gangsters"?
An FBI spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In his interview on “Fox & Friends,” Bongino also said the job was taking a toll on his family. “The biggest lifestyle change is family-wise,” he said.
“It was a lot, and it’s been tough on the family. People ask all the time, do you like it? No. I don’t,” Bongino said. “But the president didn’t ask me to do this to like it — nobody likes going into an organization like that and having to make big changes.”
Last weekend, Bongino announced on X that the FBI is re-examining multiple cases from the Biden era, including the 2021 pipe bombs at the DNC and the RNC, the 2022 leak of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade and a small bag of cocaine 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 one.
“We got a fascinating tip on one of these cases, one of the three,” he said. “We’re going to run it out. We’re not going to be able to make that public, obviously, right away, because we have to make sure.”
Focus on pipe bomb case
Three weeks before the Trump administration took office, 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.
Before he was named deputy FBI director, Bongino accused the FBI of lying about that person on one of his podcasts. “I believe the FBI knows the identity of this pipe bomber on Jan. 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 Jan. 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 said in his Fox News interview Wednesday that the FBI has new leads in the pipe bomb case. He accused the Biden administration of having “slow-rolled” the investigation but offered no specific examples.
Bongino defended reopening the investigation into who left a small bag of cocaine in the White House during the Biden administration. Bongino, a former Secret Service agent, argued that the probe was relaunched for safety reasons, not to score political points.
“I was a Secret Service agent. A potentially hazardous material made its way into the White House,” he said on Fox News. “Nobody seems to know how it got there, and nobody seemed to get to investigate it fully. ... What planet do we live on where that’s not of public interest?”
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988, or go to 988lifeline.org, to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. You can also call the network, previously known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 800-273-8255, or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.
