Some of you might have seen this on fox-but probably not in long form-and i found it interesting and important: both Kash Patel and Dan Bongino- long, long, long time FBI critics who are now in charge of the place...saying...look, we’ve seen all the evidence...and...
Jeffery Epstein killed himself...
There’s no conspiracy behind either trump assassination attempt. It was solo kooks.
And third: there -is- even more evidence that the Obama white house and FBI abused the agency to rig the 2016 election in favor of Hillary Clinton...and that will be coming out in the coming weeks.
Those are three interesting bits of information coming from -these guys. These guys- related to just ‘how corrupted’ our FBI is...and what they are finding as the ultimate critics and outsiders...going into the job of now leading it.
I’ll touch each thing, individually, starting with Patel and Bongino telling Maria Bartiromo on Sunday...something the conspiracy theorists on the right simply don’t want to hear: Jeffery Epstein honestly hung himself. No conspiracy here. The cameras were out. It looked fishy. But- all the evidence points to the simplest answer.
Now-that’s still not going to satisfy the conspiracy theorists and right-wing nuts on social media.... but I take them at their word.
And for the record? Until I heard this out of Patel and Bongino’s mouths? I’ve been assuming that Epstein was probably murdered in custody to keep him quiet.
And so- call me a conspiracy theorist on that one if you’d like. I wasn’t deeply invested in the notion. But if you would have asked me last week- did Jeffery Epstein kill himself? Or was he silenced?
I would have said- someone probably paid to have him silenced.
But...I take Patel and Bongino at their word...because they are both credible men with me-and because- you couldn’t really find two men who- prior to taking these jobs-would have been more invested in the idea that Epstein was murdered.
Know what I mean?
You could hear it in Bongino’s voice. He knows he’s going to be called a traitor and a turncoat and just ‘part of the conspiracy now’...by some of the very people who used to listen to his radio show and mull it over with him...
And so- Bongino understands what being truthful means-in a larger sense- to his reputation in the fever-swamps of the right....
And he says it, anyway: look...every bit of evidence says he killed himself. Get over it.
And there’s a point at which any reasonable person must ask themselves ‘what is it reasonable to believe’?
Back in 2019-when trump’s very credible attorney general, William Barr, declared it a suicide...he admitted: it was suspicious: come on, the guy committed suicide in one of the most secure jails in America? But....he did. In Barr’s words-it was the perfect storm of screw ups that gave him the window: sleeping guards. Broken security cameras, etc.
But you aren’t going to stop the conspiracy theorists. All they need is a little nugget to chew on and blow out of proportion.
Patel and Bongino were ‘right there’ with the rest of us, insisting that ‘this looks too suspicious’. This could not have been a suicide.
They are honest men and willing to admit when they are wrong...or were sniffing down the wrong path. It makes me like and trust them even more.
And if you don’t believe them on Epstein-well then you also aren’t likely to believe them on any conspiracy theory surrounding the assassination attempts on trump’s life. Because, there too, both men say: there’s just no evidence it was anything other than two kooks working alone.
That’s Bongino again- having worked in this same atmosphere that I have for years and knowing how a chunk of listeners are going to react- saying- look- sometimes a theory you have is just wrong. Sometimes the simplest answer is the simplest answer.
I learned long ago-and tell these younger show hosts- you just aren’t going to convince ‘some people’...on any given thing. Don’t worry about it and don’t take the bile and invective they toss at you to heart.Some people are just going to ‘believe what they believe’...
Like...Michelle is really a man...and she’s really running for president this time...and Epstein didn’t kill himself...and there’s a secret, multi-continental cabal of child molesters running everything...in every country.
Some people are just going to ‘believe what they are going to believe’...and the look on Bongino’s face-in this interview- is priceless to me. Because here’s a guy who- as a talk show host and podcaster-was engaging in some of these conspiracy theories...or at least.... raising questions suggesting the suppositions could be legit...
And now that he’s seen the whole arc of evidence must admit: i was just wrong. There’s just nothing there to support the things that are being said.
Now-on crossfire hurricane and the one so-called conspiracy theory out of the three that i really do believe and was deeply invested in: that the Obama White House and James Comey and the top brass at the FBI colluded to smear and ruin trump and rig the election for Hillary Clinton in 2016-
I mean- just the evidence that we know about speaks to the truth of this reality.
As for that narrative: Kash Patel says.... He and congress are finally, after seven years, finally- just getting to see all of the files and see the wider truth about that effort. And he says it’s real-and will all be released to the public eventually.
FBI DIRECTOR KASH PATEL: Look, I can speak to the folks that were in our seats, our predecessors, and they intentionally failed the American public by putting on the biggest D.C. deception game we’ve ever seen.
They said the FBI was the most storied institution for law enforcement, and it was, and it will be again very soon. But when the likes of Comey and McCabe and Strzok and company came in here with the James Bakers of the world and intentionally lied to a federal court, only to rig a presidential election by lying, using taxpayer dollars, likely illegally to fund this entire operation and withhold exculpatory information from a federal court that I used to appear before to manhunt terrorists—that’s what broke the FBI.
And then, when they were caught, they lied about it. You and a few others, like Dan, were brave enough to cover it six, seven, eight years ago, and we’re still talking about it today because, as Congress is working rigorously with us, the Crossfire Hurricane documents are coming fast and hard, and they’re being sent there unredacted so we can have full accountability. That’s how you restore the trust that was lost to the American public.
MARIA BARTIROMO: Yeah but come on, Director, with all due respect, we've been talking about this for a long time and I’ve been demanding accountability for many, many years. You mentioned Comey, Strzok, and the rest—they got TV shows, they’ve got media platforms, they’re fine. There’s been no accountability.
KASH PATEL: It’s a fair criticism, but what I’ll tell people is we weren’t here in the FBI in the last five years when we had statutes of limitations that were still in play. Most of these statutes of limitations are five years old, and we will investigate criminal conduct where we find a righteous case to do so. But a lot of it—we’re precluded from.
Could we have done more in the past? Sure, people before us could have. But what we can do now is continue to put out the documents, expose information that these people withheld from the American public. I’m just telling you right now, as much as we know about Crossfire Hurricane, he and I just found out more last week, and we’re continuing to work with Congress to put those documents out. That’s how vindictive the former leadership was. Not only did they bastardize the process, they withheld and hid documentation and put it in rooms where people weren’t supposed to look.
MARIA BARTIROMO: What do you mean?
KASH PATEL: Just give us about a week or two.
MARIA BARTIROMO: Okay. Well, I can tell you right now that the judge that gave a smack on the wrist to the one agent that lied and misled the American people, that’s the same judge who’s back and stopping Donald Trump from doing things, isn’t it? Judge Boasberg?
DEPUTY DIRECTOR DAN BONGINO: Yeah, I just gotta push back. Listen, we’ve been here two months. He’s been here a couple more weeks than that. [Laughter] We’ve been here two months. You’re dealing with a 38,000-member organization and an approximately $12 billion budget—
MARIA BARTIROMO: Fair point.
DAN BONGINO: To expect us in two months to dig up what was an eight-year, maybe longer, multiyear politicized investigation with multiple layers of processes, from Woods procedures just being thrown in the garbage can, flushed down the toilet bowl, to multiple layers of accountability where people lied and obfuscated, I’m not asking you to trust me. You want this done right, or do you want it done quickly? If you want it done quickly, we’ll do it, and you know what will happen—just what happened last time. Those same Spygate, collusion perpetrators sued the government—
MARIA BARTIROMO: But are you saying you found things that even you didn’t know about? You were at the core of this.
KASH PATEL: Yes.
DAN BONGINO: Yes.
KASH PATEL: I was the lead Russiagate investigator for the House Intelligence Committee, and I’ve been on both your shows in a prior life. I’m telling you and the American public that we have now found material and information and people who wanted to hide it from the world since we got in these seats. We, as the Deputy said, are trying to do it in a fashion where not only are we informing the American public about what happened, but we can have accountability for it, and that takes a little bit more time. When you layer on the fact that we are rolling out our priorities on violent crime, we’re running a three-part animal here, and we’re going 100 miles an hour on each single one.
MARIA BARTIROMO: So important.
DAN BONGINO: I want to add to that too. We come in in the morning, there’s a portfolio of 100 level-10 items. If it’s a level 9, which is a pretty big freaking deal, someone else fixes it. The only thing that gets to my desk or his is a level 10. Look at his schedule. I’ll show you the palm card I have. It is filled from 7:30 until he leaves at 7 at night, 6:30 at night. It’s filled all day. We just can’t focus on one thing. You want New York to go boom? D.C. to go boom? You want an organized crime organization to hack into some cyber network and crack all of Fox News’ holdings? We’re dealing with all that stuff too. Everything’s a priority. Everything’s a priority. This is one of many things—it’s not an excuse, it’s just reality.
Patel says...those atop the FBI during the Biden era: Comey, McCabe, Strok etc....did, in fact, abuse the power of their positions and the very considerable and powerful resources of the FBI to try to rig that election for Hillary Clinton.
It's going to be -very- interesting to see what sort of additional evidence Patel has already seen and is teasing in this interview.
He references Obama’s team abusing and tricking the FISA courts...into believing trump and/or some of his team members were potential threats to national security. Working with foreign adversaries-etc.
That’s how they got the initial approval to spy on several trump associates all thru that 2015 campaign.
And he’s leveling serious charges here- against powerful- (or at least formerly powerful) people.
Those are accusations you’d better have proof of if you are going to toss them out there...for public consumption.
But- who-in this audience-doesn’t believe Patel when he says, and then, when they were caught, they lied about it’.
Of course they did. We know they did.
We had connected all the dots at the time. One of the few questions that remains unanswered in my head, however, is ‘how closely’ were Comey and McCabe and this overall effort-being managed or directed by the Obama white house?
Was this mostly about the false dossier that Comey and McCabe -and Obama- helped bleed into the intelligence blood stream...to validate it as real? And then it was Brennan, and clapper, and Comey, etc...in the intelligence community who knowingly ran with false information to rig it for Hillary?
Or were they doing so at the expressed direction of barrack Obama, or Ben Rhodes, or others-over at the white house?
Because-one thing we know about that Obama era-they wanted to make all the calls. All of them. From the white house. Including whether our soldiers could shoot back at terrorists who were shooting at them-over in Islamabad.
So- I find it hard to believe that this wasn’t all encouraged and orchestrated-from the Obama white house- even if Comey and McCabe and Strok and page were -more than happy- to go along with it at the FBI.
photo credit: Fox News
audio version of the segment here > Kash Patel and Dan Bongino are cleaning up the FBI