Two of President Donald Trump‘s appointees to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation firmly stated that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide Sunday, causing an uproar from MAGA supporters on social media.
FBI director Kash Patel and deputy director Dan Bongino said in no uncertain terms on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures that the convicted pedophile took his own life as he was awaiting trial in 2019, going against a number of popular conspiracies about his death.
When asked by host Maria Bartiromo about Epstein’s death, Patel replied that people “have a right to their opinion,” but that the evidence points towards suicide.
“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 has 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,” Patel said.
“He killed himself, Bongino said, backing Patel up. “I’ve seen the whole file, he killed himself.”
This upset the president’s biggest fans online, many of whom continue to assert that Epstein’s death was a government conspiracy—though few mention that Trump was president when his suicide took place.
The most widely believed theory is that the government is hiding Epstein’s “client list,” which people claim contains the names of other powerful men who have also committed similar crimes. There is little evidence of this, though Trump’s current Attorney General Pam Bondi has promised to release a trove of documents from the myriad federal investigations into Epstein and his crimes.
Bongino took to X Sunday morning after the interview aired to summarize what he and Patel discussed with Bartiromo, briefly addressing his comments on Epstein’s death.
“I have reviewed the case. Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. There’s no evidence in the case file indicating otherwise,” the former MAGA podcaster wrote.
“I’m not asking you to believe me, or not. I’m telling you what exists, and what doesn’t, he added. “If new evidence surfaces I’m happy to reevaluate.”
His comments section was filled with angry MAGA X users, including MAGA podcast host Joe Oltmann, who said Bongino was “not being an honorable person.”
“Yet you can’t reinstate the very people who exposed the truth about the institutional rot in the FBI. You are not a serious person. You are not being an honorable person,” Oltmann commented.
“You want to stand up clowns while betraying the very people who have served the people,” he continued.
MAGA influencer Mindy Robinson also commented: “You work for us? 🧐 So like….when are you actually going to start?”
She went on to call the pair “f—ing sell-outs” in a separate post, adding that “Epstein didn’t kill himself, and the Las Vegas sho*ting was committed and covered up by our own damn government.”
Another right-wing influencer, Sarah Adams, commented that she believes “authorizing an outside body to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s death is something that the public would need to truly trust the findings.”
Prior to becoming Deputy Director of the FBI, Bongino spoke frequently about these conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein, claiming that we “do not know all the details of this thing, I promise.”
“[The Clinton’s] are knee deep in involvement with Jeffrey Epstein and no one can figure out what the level of entanglement is,” he said.
But journalist Julie K. Brown from the Miami Herald, whose reporting helped break the Epstein case, said that those who have worked on the case “say there is no evidence Epstein kept a ledger or a list of clients who were involved with his sex trafficking operation.”
Earlier this month, Patel testified before Congress that he wanted to release all the information on Epstein’s death.
“We are working through that right now with the Department of Justice,” he said.
During his questioning, he also stood by the claim that Epstein hung himself in his cell.
