FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino was outraged this week during a closed-door White House meeting about the Department of Justice’s review of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking case files, according to multiple sources.
Bongino raised his voice during a discussion with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles before storming out of the meeting, according to two sources close to DOJ leadership. Bongino also exchanged heated words with Attorney General Pam Bondi during the meeting, and the whole ordeal has led him to consider resigning from the FBI, another source said.
Another person with knowledge of the meeting disputed the characterization that Bongino yelled at Wiles or Bondi during the sitdown.
However, that person agreed that Bongino was ‘enraged.’ The source said the deputy director was angry about the Epstein memo rollout and what he viewed as Bondi’s ‘lack of transparency from the start.’ The memo, a joint product of the DOJ and FBI, said the two agencies had no further information to share with the public about Epstein’s case, a revelation that sparked fury among the MAGA base. The memo first appeared in Axios over the weekend, and then the DOJ and FBI published it Monday.
Asked about the claim that Bongino yelled at Wiles, a White House official said it was ‘100% false.’ Wiles is a veteran of Florida politics who led Trump’s campaign, and the president has described her as ‘universally admired.’
The fracture in DOJ and FBI leadership spilled into the public on Friday amid fallout from the memo.
The memo stated that the DOJ and FBI concluded their review of Epstein’s files and did not find any information that could lead to charges against anyone new.
Despite Bongino reportedly now breaking with leadership over the memo and weighing resignation, people familiar with the matter said as of Friday that FBI Director Kash Patel and Bondi remained in communication and that Patel is happy with his job.
A DOJ spokesman and an FBI spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
Bongino, a former Secret Service agent with no prior FBI experience, hosted a popular podcast before Trump tapped him to serve in the No. 2 role at the bureau. On his show, Bongino repeatedly raised alarm over Epstein’s ‘client list,’ saying ‘there’s a reason they’re hiding it’ and that its release would ‘rock the political world.’
But in the memo released on Monday, the FBI and DOJ said they uncovered no such list.
Bongino, Bondi and Patel are all facing blowback over the Epstein files from a faction of their supporters, who say they reneged on repeated vows to open the curtain on details of Epstein’s case.
Epstein, a financier who was known to engage with wealthy, well-known figures, was indicted in 2019 over allegations he recruited dozens of women, including minors as young as 14, and had sexual relations with them or sexually abused them. His associate Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of conspiring to sexually abuse minors and is serving a 20-year prison sentence. She has an appeal pending.
The DOJ and FBI said in their memo that much of the nonpublic information related to Epstein’s case is under court-ordered seals or contains child pornography and private information about victims.
Before joining the bureau, Patel and Bongino both advanced theories that the government was hiding information about the case, including a supposed ‘list’ of unindicted sexual predators.
The DOJ and FBI’s memo poured cold water on that idea by noting that the agencies found ‘no incriminating ‘client list.”
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement on X that DOJ and FBI leadership, including Bongino, were in lockstep during the compilation and release of the memo. The idea that ‘there was any daylight’ between the FBI and DOJ was ‘patently false,’ Blanche said.
Bongino was not at work on Friday because he was so upset by the fallout from the Epstein memo, sources said. One said Bongino had not anticipated the backlash from his supporters.
Fox News’ David Spunt and Jake Gibson contributed to this report.