Can Team Trump’s most MAGA members end Jeffrey Epstein talk?

Few people can claim the mantle of being more identified with the anti-Deep State MAGA movement than Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, the Director and Deputy Director of the FBI, who sat down for a lengthy conversation with Maria Bartiromo this weekend. Yet they responded with surprisingly out of character language to the continued conspiracizing around the death of Jeffrey Epstein – the New York financier – and the possibility of a wider plot to assassinate Donald Trump.

If anyone was going to reveal hidden secrets of the Deep State, it would be these two, who have railed against its excesses on media platforms for years before taking their posts. But that’s not what they did: “As someone who has worked as a public defender, as a prosecutor who’s been in that prison system, who’s been in the Metropolitan Detention Center, who’s been in segregated housing, you know a suicide when you see one, and that’s what that was,” Patel said when questioned about Epstein’s death. He added that those who disagree with him “have a right to their opinion.”

“He killed himself,” Bongino added, “I’ve seen the whole file, he killed himself.”

As for the motives and details related to the attempt on Trump’s life by the shooter in Butler, Pennsylvania, Bongino was even more definitive in declaring there’s nothing explosive hidden behind the curtain: “We’ve been personally briefed extensively on every single detail, nugget, tendril of this case. One is actively in court right now, so out of respect for the case, it’s probably more appropriate that I stay quiet on that.

“However, I’m not going to tell people what they want to hear. I’m going to tell you the truth, and whether you like it or not is up to you. If there was a big, explosive there, right, given my history as a Secret Service agent and my personal friendship, as a director does, with the President, give me one logical, sensible reason we would not have – if you can think of one, there isn’t. In some of these cases, the ‘there’ you’re looking for is not there. And I know people – I get it, I understand. It’s not there. If it was there, we would have told you.”

Bongino is right to say he’s not telling people on the right what they want to hear – that there is some deeper grand conspiracy that ended Epstein’s life or motivated the Butler shooter. But will they listen? Even with the public promises from Trump’s handpicked anti-Deep State warriors, it seems doubtful that any of the rabbit holes of conspiracy around these events will dissipate. Instead, expect those who invested so much in these narratives to stick with their nature, and suggest that the pair were never the champions of transparency they claimed to be – or even worse, that they’re compromised. Some people just want to believe.