Patel, Bongino Provide Update On Jeffrey Epstein’s Reported ‘Suicide’
FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino have given fresh details about convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s August 2019 suicide while in custody awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Reports at the time said Epstein was found unresponsive in his jail cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, hanging off the side of his cell’s bed with a bedsheet around his neck. After guards initiated CPR, Epstein was transported to New York Downtown Hospital, where he was pronounced dead later that evening.
The New York City medical examiner and the Justice Department Inspector General ruled that Epstein’s death was a suicide by hanging. After initially being suspicious, then-Attorney General William Barr said what happened was “a perfect storm of screw-ups” after both the FBI and Justice Department conducted their probes into Epstein’s death.
Epstein was a known associate of former President Bill Clinton, former MIT professor Noam Chomsky, and Prince Andrew, so immediately following his death, suspicions about the timing and circumstances surrounding it surfaced.
During an interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo that aired on Sunday, both Patel and Bongino reaffirmed what the DOJ and FBI have previously said – Epstein died by his own hand.
“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 told Bartiromo, adding that people who disagree “have a right to their own opinion.”
Bongino added: “He killed himself. I’ve seen the whole file. He killed himself.”
WATCH:
Conservatives expressed outrage in February after the Trump administration’s Justice Department released documents related to the Epstein case, which critics dismissed as “a complete disappointment.” The release did not include the much-anticipated “client list” and offered no new information about Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking activities.
“I nor the task force were given or reviewed the Epstein documents being released today… A NY Post story just revealed that the documents will simply be Epstein’s phonebook. THIS IS NOT WHAT WE OR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ASKED FOR and a complete disappointment. GET US THE INFORMATION WE ASKED FOR!” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna posted on the X platform at the time.
Following the backlash, Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in March that the Justice Department had received “thousands of pages” of additional documents from the Southern District of New York after she imposed a deadline for their release.
Bondi said the DOJ had obtained a “truckload of evidence” and that a detailed report from the FBI was on the way. As of now, no such report has been released.
Two weeks ago, Bondi revealed that the FBI is analyzing “tens of thousands of videos of [Jeffrey] Epstein with children or child porn” and that there are “hundreds of victims” as she addressed concerns about the delay in releasing the case files.
“The FBI is diligently going through that,” Bondi told reporters, explaining that the sheer volume of evidence was why more files had not yet been provided.
Meanwhile, Virginia Giuffre, a prominent accuser of Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew, also reportedly died by suicide in April at the age of 41. Giuffre was one of the first and most vocal individuals to come forward, filing a lawsuit against Prince Andrew in New York in 2021.
She alleged she was forced to have sex with him on three occasions between 1999 and 2002 and said she had been recruited into Epstein’s network at the age of sixteen by his then-girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who who was arrested and indicted in July 2020 and convicted on five sex trafficking-related counts on December 29, 2021.
Another associate, Jean-Luc Brunel, was arrested by French authorities in 2020 and later died by suicide.
