Jul 13, 2025 12:08:11 am
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FBI Director Kash Patel has publicly dismissed speculation he is set to walk out amid conspiracies surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein case. Patel spoke out to address a rumored rift inside the Trump administration over the Justice Department’s handling of the long-awaited Epstein files.
‘The conspiracy theories just aren’t true, never have been,’ Patel posted on X. ‘It’s an honor to serve the President of the United States @realDonaldTrump — and I’ll continue to do so for as long as he calls on me.’ 12/7/25
Patel’s remarks follow reports of a heated internal dispute involving FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino and Attorney General Pam Bondi. The clash reportedly stemmed from an unsigned memo released on Sunday with DOJ and FBI seals, that concluded Epstein did not get murdered in prison and that none of the available evidence included a so-called ‘client list’
Bongino reportedly ‘took the day off’ from work on Friday, Axios reported, and a source close to Bongino said ‘he ain’t coming back’.
Despite affirmation from the Attorney General, backlash to the memo has been particularly fierce among those who anticipated major revelations tied to Epstein’s network. Critics have also accused Patel and Bongino of retreating from earlier pledges for full transparency.
SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: Maryland Democratic Representative Jeremy Raskin announced plans to urge House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan to subpoena Bondi, Patel and Bongino for questioning on the Epstien files, The Independent reported.
‘I’m gonna be asking Chairman Jordan to call for a hearing where we subpoena the attorney general and Dan Bongino and Kash Patel to come in and tell us everything that we know because this thing is really spinning out of control at this point,’ Raskin said.
‘And there’s one way to put it to rest, which is to come clean, as President Trump promised he would during the campaign.’
Despite mounting pressure, Patel’s statement signals his intention to remain in his post and continue supporting former Trump’s second-term agenda.
Bongino, before taking his official post at the FBI, touted conspiracy theories that Epstein was murdered in prison and didn’t kill himself like the official medical report concluded. ‘Dan, who didn’t need to be there and simply wanted to serve the President, now finds himself in a precarious position with everything to lose,’ the insider told the Daily Mail.
‘This completely botched release was an attempted forced compliance where the DOJ has all the power.’ The person familiar with the Epstein review said that the DOJ is the body with the ability to decide what gets released – including reviewing any information that comes from the FBI before it goes to the public.
SOMETHING FISHY: On Wednesday, Bongino and Bondi got into a heated argument over the ‘missing minutes’ of footage from the nearly 11 hours of surveillance video released over the weekend of the prison the night Epstein died, Axios reported. The administration said the video proves that Epstein was not murdered. Authorities claim that every day at midnight the video resets and starts a new recording, which leaves one minute blank for processing time.
But the jump left conspiracy theorists even more wary of the footage, but already was questioned over why there wasn’t a clear view of Epstein’s cell door. Other critics also pointed to the fact that a large railing hid the man’s face that authorities claimed was the convicted child sex offender going to his cell the night he died.
Ultimately, Trump and Bondi appear ready to move on from the Epstein files. But the American public doesn’t appear too pleased to take the answers they have provided at face-value. Bongino appears to agree with a growing chorus of right-wing voices calling for answers and demanding Bondi step down over her handling of the Epstein files. – By Samantha Rutt
THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA: Patel has also authored children’s books that lionise Trump – The Plot Against the King – featuring a thinly veiled Hillary Clinton as the villain going after “King Donald” while Kash plays a wizard who thwarts her plans.
In a post on Truth Social network, Trump described Patel as a “brilliant lawyer, investigator, and ‘America First’ fighter”.
Trump has frequently voiced distrust of the FBI, accusing it of political bias, particularly after its search of his Mar-a-Lago resort for classified documents he allegedly stored illegally. Patel found common cause with Trump over their shared scepticism of government surveillance and the “deep state” – a pejorative catchall used by Trump to refer to government bureaucracy.
He wrote another book – Government Gangsters – which is part memoir and part screed against the so-called deep state. Patel’s candidacy has won support from prominent Trump supporters, including people who support the president-elect’s agenda at the FBI and Justice Department and the idea of using his electoral win to pursue retaliation against his perceived adversaries.
Trump said Patel would restore “fidelity, bravery and integrity” to the agency. Under Patel, Trump said, the FBI would “end the growing crime epidemic in America, dismantle the migrant criminal gangs, and stop the evil scourge of human and drug trafficking across the border”.
Patel was part of a small group of supporters during Trump’s recent criminal trial in New York who accompanied him to the courthouse, where he told reporters that Trump was the victim of an “unconstitutional circus”.
NOT A CREDIBLE WITNESS: He also testified at a Colorado court hearing related to Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the run-up to the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol.
Patel, who at the time of the riot was chief of staff to the then-acting defence secretary, testified that Trump had pre-emptively authorised 10,000 to 20,000 soldiers to deploy days before the attack. But a Colorado court later found that Patel was “not a credible witness” on the topic.
An October 2024 Atlantic article suggested, Patel “appeared singularly focused on pleasing Trump”.
“Even in an administration full of loyalists, Patel was exceptional in his devotion.” Following Trump’s announcement on Saturday, Gerry Connolly, a senior Democratic member of the House of Representatives, called Patel a “zealot”.
“Out of a sea of unqualified, dangerous, and downright bizarre nominations, this is perhaps the worst,” Connolly said in a post on X.
Patel has signalled through interviews and public statements a determination to upend the FBI and radically reshape its mission. He has called for dramatically reducing its footprint and limiting its authority, as well as going after government officials who disclose information to reporters.
MUSEUM OF THE DEEP STATE: In an interview earlier this year on the Shawn Ryan Show podcast, Patel promised to sever the FBI’s intelligence-gathering activities from the rest of its mission, and said he would “shut down” the bureau’s headquarters building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, and “reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state’”.
In a separate interview with conservative strategist Steve Bannon, Patel said he and others “will go out and find the conspirators not just in government but in the media”.
Patel first came to prominence in Trump’s orbit as an outspoken critic of the FBI’s investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. As a staffer on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired at the time by Representative Devin Nunes, a Trump loyalist, Patel helped author a four-page report that detailed what it said were errors the Justice Department made in obtaining a warrant to surveil a former Trump campaign adviser.
A 2020 report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the Kremlin launched an aggressive effort to meddle in the 2016 presidential contest on behalf of Trump. – Al Jazeera 1 December, 2024.
MONKEY BUSINESS: Video footage released by the Department of Justice (DOJ) from inside Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, taken the night before authorities say Jeffrey Epstein killed himself, was likely “assembled from at least two source clips” and “modified” prior to its release, according to an investigation by WIRED and video forensics experts.
The DOJ described the footage it released on Monday as the “full, raw” surveillance video from a camera near Epstein’s prison cell.
It said that the video “confirmed that from the time Epstein was locked in his cell at around 10:40 p.m. on August 9, 2019, until around 6:30 a.m. the next morning, nobody entered any of the tiers” in the unit where Epstein was being held.
The WIRED analysis of the video’s metadata said it had been modified, most likely using editing software Adobe Premiere Pro, and had been “assembled from at least two source clips, saved multiple times, exported, and then uploaded to the DOJ’s website.”
A 2023 report from the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General found that about half of the surveillance cameras at the facility where Epstein died, and most of those inside his detention unit, were not working on July 29, saying this was due to a technical error.
Speaking to WIRED, Professor Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert at UC Berkeley, said: “If a lawyer brought me this file and asked if it was suitable for court, I’d say no. Go back to the source. Do it right. Do a direct export from the original system—no monkey business.” NewsWeek.