‘I spoke to him today. Dan Bongino is a very good guy,’ Trump said of the deputy FBI director on July 13.
President Donald Trump said he spoke to FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino on July 13, indicating that the two remain close despite reported friction over the release of the Jeffrey Epstein documents.
“I spoke to him today. Dan Bongino is a very good guy. I’ve known him a long time,” Trump told reporters outside Air Force 1. “He’s in good shape.”
The comments come after Axios reported that Bongino—previously a conservative commentator who had long pressed for answers about Epstein’s 2019 death and operation—skipped work on July 11 because of disagreements with Attorney General Pam Bondi’s handling of the matter.
Laura Loomer, a political commentator close to the president, also reported on Bongino’s absence from work, similarly referencing disagreements between Bongino and Bondi.
Trump on July 12 told his supporters not to continue looking into the circumstances surrounding the billionaire’s death.
“What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’” Trump said in a July 12 post on social media platform Truth Social. “They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! We’re on one Team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening.
“We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and ‘selfish people’ are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein.”
He added: “One year ago our Country was DEAD, now it’s the ‘HOTTEST’ Country anywhere in the World. Let’s keep it that way, and not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.”
Epstein’s case has been intensely scrutinized online for years following his 2019 death in federal custody while awaiting prosecution on charges of engaging in a multiyear conspiracy to sex traffic minors.
The billionaire was determined to have hanged himself in his cell, but given his connections with many high-ranking officials and celebrities, many have speculated that Epstein was murdered. The nature of Epstein’s operation, involving the reported sexual exploitation of over one thousand victims, many of whom were minors, has also been scrutinized.
At a July 8 Cabinet meeting, a reporter asked Bondi to address a claim that Epstein had been some form of intelligence community asset.
“I have no knowledge about that,” she said. “We can get back to you on that.”
During that Cabinet meeting, Bondi also said a missing minute from a jail surveillance tape on the night Epstein died was a normal circumstance due to a routine technical artifact in the camera system, as the video is reset every night at 12 a.m.
Trump suggested that nothing in the Epstein files “could have hurt the MAGA Movement.”
On July 7, the Department of Justice and FBI released a memo stating that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide and had no “client list,” and that the agencies would not release any further material related to the Epstein case.
“As part of our commitment to transparency, the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted an exhaustive review of investigative holdings relating to Jeffrey Epstein,” the agencies stated in the memo.
The review found that Epstein committed suicide in his cell as he was awaiting trial in August 2019. The finding was supported by an autopsy conducted at the time.
“The conclusion that Epstein died by suicide is further supported by video footage from the common area of the Special Housing Unit (SHU) where Epstein was housed at the time of his death,” the memo reads.
The review found that Epstein did not keep a list of clients as part of his sex trafficking activities. Additionally, there is no evidence that Epstein blackmailed individuals, according to the memo.
Nonetheless, according to the review, Epstein “harmed over one thousand victims” as “each suffered unique trauma.”
Jackson Richman and Ryan Morgan contributed to this report.
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