In a Saturday post on X, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino reminded his followers that, although the public isn’t privy to what’s going on behind the scenes at the FBI, “things are happening.”
Most significantly, he said that what he’s learned during the course of his work has shocked him down to his core: “We cannot run a Republic like this. I’ll never be the same after learning what I’ve learned.”
The last we heard from Dan Bongino, he had taken a day off following a heated clash with Attorney General Pam Bondi over the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case. He was reportedly very angry and needed time to decide if he should stay at the FBI or move on.
The catalyst was a joint memo dated July 6 from the Department of Justice and the FBI that stated a “systematic review” of the Epstein materials had uncovered no “client list,” and found no evidence that Epstein had either “blackmailed prominent individuals” or been murdered, contrary to earlier speculation.
Apparently, Bongino decided to remain in his position and returned to work the following Monday. We never heard precisely how, or even if, he and Bondi had reconciled their differences.
I have no doubt that Bongino is uncovering some astonishing information. And although this is pure speculation, he may be alluding to materials discovered in a previously unknown “evidence room” in the FBI building in late May — documents that reportedly dated back to the tenure of former FBI Director James Comey.
Discussing the material the FBI had stumbled upon in an appearance on Fox News’s Fox & Friends shortly afterward, Bongino said:
I wouldn’t call it hidden, but hidden from us at least and not mentioned to us, and then we found stuff in there and a lot of it’s from the Comey-era, and we are working our damndest right now to declassify. And just so you know, because I get the public, I totally understand people saying, ‘Well, do it now.’ The process is [that] not all information is ours to declassify; some is other intelligence agencies, it’s not– we literally can’t do it. Once that gets done and that gets out there, and you read some of the stuff, we found that, by the way, was not processed through the normal procedure, digitizing it, putting it in FBI records. We found it in bags hiding under Jim Comey’s FBI, and you’re going to be stunned!Wait till you read this stuff.
It’s easy to forget what was unfolding in Washington, D.C., during the first two years of Trump’s first term. After Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017, the bureau’s dubious Crossfire Hurricane investigation morphed into Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe. The legacy media took its cues from the odious Andrew Weissmann — the lead prosecutor on Mueller’s team — and the equally odious Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
Russiagate fever had swept the city. Under Weissmann’s direction, strategically timed leaks from the special counsel’s office to the press were a regular occurrence.
Meanwhile, Schiff, an obscure congressman who had arrived in Washington in 2001 but was virtually unknown, suddenly became a media star. He appeared on every left-leaning talk show, repeatedly claiming that evidence of Trump’s collusion with Russia to win the 2016 election was “in plain sight.”
The Democrats’ propaganda mill was in overdrive, and their strategy was working.
On the right, three individuals, in my view, played the most pivotal roles in fighting back and exposing the truth behind the deception. The first was Kash Patel.
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), then Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, launched an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Patel, whom Nunes brought on as a senior aide in April 2017, effectively led the effort.
Patel played a pivotal role in drafting the now-famous Nunes Memo, released in February 2018, which helped expose key facts. The investigation revealed that the FBI had presented the Steele dossier as the primary basis for a FISA court application — and three subsequent renewals — to surveil Carter Page. This, in turn, granted the bureau access to the Trump campaign’s communications and, eventually, to those from the early months of his presidency.
The second was Dan Bongino, who worked relentlessly — day after day, tracking each key figure — to methodically expose and dismantle the vast, coordinated conspiracy waged against Donald Trump. He reported his discoveries daily on his wildly popular podcast. Bongino summed up his findings in a best-selling book titled Spygate: The Attempted Sabotage of Donald J. Trump.
[The third was investigative journalist and the current founder and editor of Just the News, John Solomon.]
I can only imagine how stunned former President Barack Obama, former CIA Director John Brennan, James Comey, and the rest of the key players must have been upon hearing that Patel and Bongino would be taking the reins at the FBI.
And if the information was enough to shake Dan Bongino to his core, then it must be truly explosive. I, for one, look forward to learning more.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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