By Jeffrey Blehar
Tuesday, July 2025
The Corner has suffered in recent weeks from an appalling
lack of Dan Bongino content; I am here to remedy the situation. For those
unaware — and I mentioned this story in this week’s Carnival of Fools — the deputy director of the FBI
apparently had a meeting for the ages last Wednesday at the Justice Department,
one where he barked at Attorney General Pam Bondi and threatened to quit his
job unless she quit hers.
A bold threat indeed — especially from a man who holds an
appointed (rather than confirmed) position in Trump’s cabinet and is therefore
clearly the replaceable cog in the machine. This all stems from the fallout of
Bondi’s sheepish announcement that “Phase I” of the Epstein files, rolled out
with such anticlimactic hilarity to handpicked MAGA influencers back in late
February, was actually “Phase the Last” — and that the DOJ was officially
closing the book on Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide once and for all. No “client
list” would be forthcoming. In fact — oops! — Bondi misspoke when she promised
the world several months ago that any such “client list” was “sitting on my
desk waiting for review.”
The most online and conspiratorially driven quarters of
MAGA obviously spit the bit at this, and Bongino — as a former populist talk
radio host with hopes of returning to that gig someday — was feeling the heat
from his former listener base. Bongino accused Bondi of making them all look
like clowns, while Bondi in turn apparently accused Bongino of leaking to the
press. In the words of the old journalistic euphemism, it was an extremely
frank exchange of opinions.
Immediately afterward, the Daily Wire’s White
House reporter caught a hot scoop. First:
“Source close to Dan Bongino tells me it’s either him or Pam Bondi, and that he
won’t stay at FBI if she stays at DOJ.” Second,
mere minutes later: “MORE: Source close to DOJ says Kash Patel also wants Pam
Bondi gone, and that he’d consider leaving if Bongino leaves. Also that there
are more frustrations with other documents Bondi hasn’t released.”
Since nobody can know for sure except those directly
involved, I’ll just gently suggest that Pam Bondi might have been on to
something when she began hurling leak accusations. (Perhaps the Daily Wire’s
source was well-known DOJ insider “Donna Bingo.”) Patel himself later clarified
that he had no intention of stepping down as FBI director, and Trump moved both
publicly (on Truth Social) and privately to squelch further
internal ructions. CNN has a handy summary of the state of events:
As of Monday morning, no one in
leadership at the Justice Department had spoken to Bongino since Wednesday,
when he implied that he could no longer continue in his position as long as
Bondi was there, sources familiar with the matter said.
The threat infuriated Trump, who
spent the weekend fuming over both Bongino and FBI Director Kash Patel, sources
told CNN. Most of his fury was directed at Bongino, causing aides to expect
that the deputy director would depart his job in the coming days. But Vice
President JD Vance spent the weekend attempting to mediate, at times fielding
calls from Patel, Bongino and Bondi, sources said.
It remains to be seen if Bongino
ultimately resigns, which he told others he was considering. But sources say
his relationship with the White House has become basically untenable. Even if
he does not quit now, some inside the administration believe he will not stay
in the job long-term.
That brings us to my favorite part of this entire affair,
where Bongino yesterday cribbed a glorious page from George
Costanza’s personal playbook and slunk his way quietly back into the
office, deciding that maybe he wasn’t going to quit after all. There he
remains, at present — a figurehead who has declared war upon his nominal
superior in Bondi, enraged his true boss in Trump, and done all of this from a
position of zero internal leverage. (If it’s any consolation, Bongino was
always a figurehead — he received his appointment because Trump liked him as a
MAGA radio host, not because of his law-enforcement expertise.) Bongino has
burned his administration bridges — particularly by dragging Patel into the
whole mess — and it remains to be seen how long he will remain in his position.
But better to leave a month or two from now, when the Epstein fires have died
down, than in a huff, and in bad odor with Trump and the “official MAGA”
movement.
The question, of course, is: Will those fires die down?
The conspiracy theorists of the world insist not. Tucker Carlson just announced
that Darryl Cooper — the crank historian of “Churchill and the Jews are the
villains of WWII” notoriety — is returning to his podcast on Thursday to reveal
the “true history” of the Jeffrey Epstein case to the world. (Wonder who
they’ll blame?) Trump and his
administration are determined to move on, however, and given the natural force
of his political gravity, I have to assume that by this time next week we will
all be talking about something else.
Trump sure isn’t doing himself any favors, though! The
president of the United States, when queried about the Epstein files this
morning, had this to offer:
I would say these files were made
up by Comey, they were made up by Obama, they were made up by B—the Biden inf-,
uh, muh, you know, uh, and we went through years of that with Russia, Russia
Russia hoax.
Gosh, I dunno. It sounds an awful lot like the comparison
he’s drawing there is to his own name’s presence in the Steele Dossier — the
infamous Russiagate hoax. And that is quite possibly the single most
unfortunate analogy Trump could have randomly grasped for as a comparison. But
it’s probably just that — an unfortunate analogy, and nothing more.
The real takeaway from the Epstein kerfuffle for me is
about how eager Trump is to “keep the band together” during what — and this
quietly amazes me, as a professional commentator — is still only his first half
year in office. Trump cares about tamping down on internal discontents that
threaten to divide his coalition, which in all honesty exhibits more
conscientiousness than I would have expected from him in his present position,
given that he’ll never run another race. But the pattern is clear: Instead of
going to war hammer-and-tongs with Elon Musk, as first-term Trump might have,
he has sought to placate him, remain judiciously silent, and accept an uneasy
détente with his former DOGE-man star. Instead of wading hip-deep into the
Epstein mess and taking sides, Trump realizes he can’t replace most of these
people right now and thus needs them to at least pretend to get along.
At some point, Bongino is likely to go. (He can be easily
replaced, and unlike those who are currently exercising real power — Patel,
Bondi, etc. — he has more to gain both reputationally and financially in the
private sector than he does from continued association with a Trump
administration he has to answer for.) But for now, the true story of the entire
“Epstein files” mess isn’t about Jeffrey Epstein, “pedophile island,” or any of
the mad conspiracy theories floating around the man and his death. The story to
pay attention to, rather, is how Donald Trump has managed to hold a
rambunctiously explosive coalition (composed of free radicals like the Epstein
conspiracy theorists, but not at all confined to them) together, through sheer
force of personal will.
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