According to a new report, it is going to be one or the other in the U.S. Justice Department, which oversees the FBI. Either Pam Bondi is relieved of her job, or FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director and former flamethrower Dan Bongino will resign in protest. It is hard to believe that either Patel or Bongino has the guts to take such a stand this early but it really sets up a weird dynamic because one gets the feeling that Bondi didn’t make the final decision when it comes to the Epstein matter – which is reportedly driving the call for Bondi to step down. Even though the Attorney General is supposed to be almost wholly independent of the White House, we know how these people work, and there is no such thing in this administration. Bondi may be in a situation where if she insists on keeping her job, then Patel and Bongino may be gone because no one is going to fire her over the matter. Unless Trump steps in.
According to a report in Mediaite, generally a reliable source for news:
FBI Director Kash Patel may reportedly join Deputy Director Dan Bongino in resigning if Attorney General Pam Bondi keeps her job. Bongino and Bondi clashed over President Donald Trump’s administration’s handling of the case of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
The deputy director, according to The Daily Wire’s Mary Margaret Olohan, had also made it clear that he would be leaving his post if Bondi kept hers. Not long after that reporting, Olohan added that Patel has joined Bongino in his stand against Bondi.
How very interesting. Note that no one is threatening to quit unless the actual Epstein report is released, only that the person who holds the records be gone. The sense is that the decision came from Trump, and both Patel and Bongino are attempting to separate themselves from the decision, thereby essentially asking Bondi to sacrifice herself over something which she likely doesn’t control.
The thought of Patel and Bongino resigning doesn’t exactly bring tears to the eyes, but given that the unforgivable Bondi is their boss, along with heading up the DOJ, it would be of more value to have Bondi step down… while holding one’s breath over the type of replacement that Trump might find. Which raises an interesting question.
It appears that someone has to go. The more interesting question right now is how the Senate would react to either vacancy. Yes, the Senate bent over backward for Trump’s appointments early on, but one gets the sense that they have a ton of buyer’s remorse over the candidates offered. They are definitely sick of Peter Hegseth at Defense. Bondi is likely the safest one of immediate consideration, but no one in the Senate liked the Patel pick – who was a total Trumper choice, one in which nearly everyone thought that the position should go to someone more experienced in running the FBI.
To a certain extent, both Patel and Bongino look to be protecting the FBI, which investigated Epstein and likely knows where the bodies are buried, ideally only figuratively. Perhaps they want Bill Clinton buried and don’t particularly care how many Republicans go down. It is noteworthy that, as top FBI officials, they would know whether Trump is implicated and therefore must know that either there is too little evidence to tie Trump to criminality or Trump managed to skate with respect to Jeffrey Epstein, not in life itself. It is also possible that this FBI managed to write its report while ignoring evidence as applied to Trump. Perhaps Trump wants to ensure that anyone caught up in the matter cannot point to him, something that Patel and Bongino worry less about. It is a bit weird.
There is also the fact that Epstein was rumored to be owned by the intelligence community, namely the CIA and-or Mossad. There has always been a heated rivalry between the FBI and CIA, and it’s possible that Patel and Bongino desperately want to take the CIA down a peg, and it is Trump who is protecting the CIA, an agency that he seemingly had more respect for in the campaign.
We are faced with a lot of possibilities, but there is a certainty. Trump has to be the one who made the final call on whether to release the report. Nothing else makes sense. Given that reality, one can speculate all day as to his reasons (It may be that Trump isn’t actually implicated in this investigation because Maxwell is hoping for a pardon and conveniently forgot to mention him, or Trump is afraid of the powerful folks that are named and perhaps even paid off by them. Nothing is off the table.) But it is hard to see Trump wanting any of the three to go because he doesn’t need the headache right now of keeping all this in the news. He also knows that he tends to pick loyalists who come up short on experience and temperament, and he doesn’t want to face the Senate again.
After all, Hegseth is still on the job.
But it appears that there will be a vacancy without movement on this. It is within the realm of possibility that Trump will call a meeting at the White House and lay down the law – so to speak – about none of them resigning because it will hurt him. This dynamic must be driving him crazy. He cannot be happy about the Epstein matter staying in the news cycle.
And yet this is the bed he has made, relying heavily on an electorate that is obsessed with conspiracy theories, believing that they will finally get the hated Clintons. If Clinton is caught up in the mess, so be it. Unlike Republicans, we’re not into protecting grotesque figures just because they happen to be Democrats. Senator Bob Menendez deserves every day he gets for insider dealing with Egypt. If Bill Clinton assaulted kids, girls, he deserves whatever he gets. And in fact, he deserves more condemnation for the stuff we already know he did.
Donald Trump also deserves whatever may be found in the real world. One just gets the sense that there wouldn’t be this showdown if it somehow endangered Trump. Either he truly wasn’t caught up in Epstein’s criminality – hard to believe given the very close friendship – or he is afraid of the ones who were abusing children with the never-to-be-damned enough Epstein.
We don’t know. We do know what the Senate currently thinks about some of Trump’s picks. It is a certainty that Trump doesn’t want to deal with this hassle. But it’s also apparent that there is heated disagreement in the DOJ right now.
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The obvious question becomes, what exactly is there to get engaged in “heated arguments” and threaten resignation, if as stated, no list exists???
If there is nothing to release, because it doesn’t exist, what is the argument about exactly???
Why the obvious questions aren’t asked is beyond me. It is a simple matter. Either something exists or it doesn’t, no need to elaborate, threaten or litigate.
“Patel and Bongino Will Quit if Bondi Remains”
Sounds like a fair swap to me.
Bondi or the FBI’s Beavis and Butthead? How is one to choose? What’s the “best bad choice?”