Caught in the Conspiracy Crossfire

Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel helped feed the MAGA base’s deepest conspiratorial fantasies. Now that same base is turning on them.

Last month, Bondi made a startling announcement. “There are tens of thousands of videos of [Jeffrey] Epstein with children or child porn and there are hundreds of victims,” she told reporters gathered at the White House. “And no one victim will ever get released.” She added that the FBI was “diligently going through that.”

But on Thursday, sitting across from Joe Rogan, Patel seemed to contradict Bondi’s claim the government was sitting on footage “of what you want” from Epstein’s island. “We’re not gonna re-victimize women. We’re not going to put that shit back out there,” Patel said. “If there was a video of some guy or gal committing felonies on an island and I’m in charge, don’t you think you’d see it?”

The dueling claims from the leaders of Donald Trump’s Department of Justice once again raised questions about what evidence the government actually has in its possession after its leaders embraced the idea that Epstein’s death was part of a vast, sinister cover-up to satisfy the MAGA base.

As luck would have it, the Rogan interview was being recorded live as Elon Musk and the president staged their long-anticipated breakup for the world to witness. In a tweet, Musk detonated a nuclear bomb: “Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.”

The claim landed with such force that a pair of House Democrats sent Bondi and Patel a letter “with profound alarm” demanding the Justice Department and FBI “immediately clarify whether this allegation is true.” They gave a June 20 deadline.

When Rogan asked Patel about Musk’s claim live during the podcast, Patel all but ran for cover: “I’m not participating in any of that conversation,” he said. “I’m just staying out of the Trump-Elon thing, that’s way outside my lane. I know my lane, and that ain’t it.”

The backlash was immediate among Trump’s online MAGA warriors.

“I’m more upset and pissed off than I’ve ever been,” Alex Jones raged on his conspiracy program. “To see Patel sit there and try to spin things in live time and take things out of context—well, they just dug their hole deeper for them.”

Bondi, Patel and Fox News host-turned-FBI deputy director Dan Bongino spent months building a rickety scaffold of intrigue around Epstein’s death, positioning themselves as the gatekeepers of shocking evidence that, in their telling, could implicate elites in unspeakable crimes. The suggestion was always clear: the files would blow the lid off the so-called deep state and destroy Trump’s enemies.

But instead of releasing the documents and videos they’ve promised about Epstein’s enablers or potential government failures, the Trump administration is peddling sideshows. On Rogan’s podcast, Patel said the FBI had a “great breakthrough” this week by recovering Dr. Anthony Fauci’s old cell phone, which he planned to comb through as part of an investigation into supposed pandemic-era wrongdoing. Trump announced a probe into former President Biden’s use of the autopen to sign documents, in what he absurdly claimed was “one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history”. And Bongino said he would reinvestigate the 2023 discovery of cocaine at the White House.

“Half of what we have to respond to is the click army on social media,” Patel acknowledged to Rogan in a revealing moment.

This is the risk of fueling conspiracies that were never meant to be resolved—only to titillate the MAGA base. Bondi and Patel helped elevate these narratives, and now they’re stuck managing the backlash from a base they once energized.

The MAGA movement always demanded villains. Now, Bondi and Patel might be discovering they’ve become them.