Video News Clips: In Their Own Words

Dan Bongino Hosts Kash Patel For Interview — But They Ignore Epstein Files

Screenshot/Rumble/The Dan Bongino Show

Former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino hosted FBI Director Kash Patel for a 23-minute interview on “The Dan Bongino Show” Wednesday, during which they did not discuss files pertaining to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The Epstein files have been a contentious issue for President Donald Trump’s administration, particularly after Axios reported in July that a Department of Justice (DOJ) memo found that the deceased sex offender had left no “client list” and that there was no evidence of foul play in his death. Rather than address the topic on the show, Bongino and Patel discussed Antifa, touted their work at the FBI, praised Trump, complained about media coverage and lamented the challenging choices they had to make.

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“490% increase in those who prey upon our children. 490% increase in arrests by the FBI. The FBI under the last year … for violent crime from 2024 to 2025, twice as many arrests,” Patel said. “That’s unbelievable, Dan. These numbers are truly historic. And that was the foundational tectonic shift you and I put into place in the FBI to let the cops go out there and be cops.”

Without mentioning the Epstein files, Bongino stressed that he, Patel and other top administration officials faced what he called “level 10 decisions,” which he described as “shitty” and “shittier.” He previously called the Epstein case “one of those level 10 decisions” that had no good answer on Feb. 2.

“When people are principals and deputies and at cabinet-level or cabinet kind of equivalent positions, everything’s a level 10 decision, Kash, meaning there’s a shitty decision and a shittier one … when that decision can’t even be made by me, it goes to you,” Bongino told Patel on Wednesday. “When it doesn’t go to you, it goes to the president’s desk. He’s dealing with level 11 decisions. And that’s the thing in D.C. That’s why the batting average isn’t always going to be 1,000.”

“There’s no good call to be made or someone else would have made it,” he added. “There’s just really tough decisions where there’s a shit call and a shittier one. And listen, that’s what we signed up for. That’s how it rolls.”

Patel agreed, adding that their choices were made “in the best interest” of the United States.

Bongino defended the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files on his first episode of “The Dan Bongino Show” since leaving the FBI on Feb. 2. He asserted that the files did not contain the level of wrongdoing that he had anticipated before joining the bureau.

“I want to see the files, folks. I said, don’t let it go. I meant it,” he said at the time. “We got elected. We looked at it. The file was not — what was in there was not what we thought would be in there.”

“I’m not going to spend the next two years talking about it. This administration got you the information. You can all look at it. And a lot of people are using it to divide us from the inside … A lot of this is bullshit,” he also said. “A lot of it is foreign operations designed to make us divorce ourselves from the inside, current thing, everything. It is a deadly serious case. There is zero doubt about it. Everyone in the administration treated it as such.”