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In Appointing a Babysitter, Todd Blanche Concedes Dan Bongino Can’t Match Andrew McCabe’s Competence

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Forty days after Dan Bongino had to take a day off from work because he was so emotional about the Jeffrey Epstein cover-up, Todd Blanche appointed a babysitter for the podcast host.

Missouri’s far right wing Attorney General, Andrew Bailey, will serve as co-Deputy Director, which before Blanche arrived and turned DOJ into a vehicle for sex trafficking cover-ups, was never a thing.

Here’s how WaPo reported the appointment.

“Thrilled to welcome Andrew Bailey as our new FBI Co-Deputy Director,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said on social media Monday evening. “As Missouri’s Attorney General, he took on the swamp, fought weaponized government and defended the Constitution. Now he is bringing that fight to DOJ.”

Fox News Digital first reported on Bailey’s appointment. Both Attorney General Pam Bondi and Patel provided comments to the outlet celebrating the move.

Multiple news outlets reported that Bailey was considered for a top Justice Department or FBI position at the beginning of the administration, but the president opted not to nominate him.

The FBI deputy director position does not require Senate approval and it was unclear how Bongino and Bailey will split the responsibilities of the job.

Bailey arrives at the FBI at a time when the bureau is facing intense criticism from Trump supporters over its handling of the sex trafficking investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. Before their positions at the FBI, Patel and Bongino had spread conspiracy theories about the case, suggesting that the FBI during the Biden administration covered up key details of the investigation to protect powerful people who may have participated in sex crimes alongside Epstein.

The move comes just as the FBI announced it will miss the deadline for turning over Epstein files to Congress, the kind of moment that might require better cover-up skills than releasing an obviously altered video as “proof” that Epstein killed himself.

Now, on the one hand, it’s easy to laugh your ass off at this move, which is tacit confirmation that Bongino is nowhere near as competent as, say, Andrew McCabe.

Bongino has wailed about how hard this job is. So now, I guess, he has a job share, the kind of accommodation you might make for someone with inadequate qualifications for the job.

On the other hand, I have suspicions that this is not so much about the Jeffrey Epstein cover-up and Bongino’s manifest incompetence. The move comes shortly after Kash Patel fired two senior officials, along with the agent who had been flying his plane (who also played a role in the Mar-a-Lago search and the Peter Navarro arrest).

The FBI has forced out at least three senior officials who found themselves at odds with President Donald Trump’s administration, including a former acting director who resisted demands to fire agents involved in investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to people familiar with the dismissals.

Brian Driscoll, who briefly served as acting head of the bureau during the first weeks of Trump’s second term, was fired by senior leaders this week and will finish his last day Friday, said three people familiar with his departure, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the unannounced personnel move.

Driscoll was given no reason for his firing, the people said. But during his brief tenure at the top, he earned the respect of much of the FBI’s rank and file after he resisted orders from Trump Justice Department appointees to identify hundreds of agents who had been involved in the Capitol riot investigations, which agents feared could signal a wider purge.

“I regret nothing,” Driscoll wrote in a farewell message to colleagues obtained by The Washington Post. He added, “Our collective sacrifices for those we serve is, and will always be, worth it.”

Also dismissed this week were Steven Jensen, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington field office, and Walter Giardina, an agent involved in the investigation that sent Trump’s former trade adviser Peter Navarro to prison, the people familiar with the matter said.

The firing of Driscoll and Jensen would already have required a new organizational structure, from the reorganization that Kash pushed through in March.

But I can’t help but thinking about the number of sensitive investigative steps at FBI that require high level approval — most famously, FISA warrants.

Everything at FBI runs according to the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (one, two), a big unwieldy guide meant to prevent the abuses of J Edgar Hoover. Not only do certain sensitive investigations — say, of journalists or members of Congress — require high level approval, in some cases from the Deputy. But the Deputy owns the document.

If you get a competently corrupt Deputy (Bongino certainly doesn’t have the competence) you could dismantle those protections in order to make the FBI a far more politicized entity.

Perhaps most notably, the appointment of Bailey comes the day after DOJ appealed a judge’s ruling that the FTC’s investigation of Media Matters repeats past attempts to infringe on the NGO’s First Amendment rights — a ruling in which Bailey’s own politicized investigation of Media Matters figured prominently.

Mr. Musk responded on November 18, 2023, by promising to file “a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters.” Id. ¶ 38 (quoting Elon Musk (@elonmusk), X (Nov. 18, 2023, 2:01 am), https://perma.cc/X4HN-PLJ4). He claimed that “activist groups like Media Matters . . . try to use their influence to attack our revenue streams by deceiving advertisers on X.” Id. ¶ 39 (quoting Elon Musk (@elonmusk), X (Nov. 18, 2023, 2:01 am), https://perma.cc/X4HN-PLJ4). As he saw it, Media Matters had “‘manipulate[d]’ advertisers and the public by ‘curat[ing]’ and ‘contriv[ing]’ in order to ‘find a rare instance of ads serving next to the content they chose to follow.’” Id. ¶ 39.

The next day, on November 19, 2023, Stephen Miller, the current White House Deputy Chief of Staff, in response to a post on X about the Media Matters article, stated that “[f]raud is both a civil and criminal violation” and that “[t]here are 2 dozen+ conservative state Attorneys General.” Id. ¶ 40 (quoting Stephen Miller (@StephenM), X (May 17, 2022, 11:12 am), https://perma.cc/5X5H-5QLN). Just a few hours later, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey replied to Mr. Miller’s post: “My team is looking into this matter.” Id. ¶ 41 (quoting Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey), X (Nov. 19, 2023, 4:46pm), https://perma.cc/J463- 656K). And the next day, on November 20, 2023, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton “announced that he was launching an investigation into Media Matters, purportedly under Texas’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act.” Id. ¶ 42. That same day, Mr. Musk’s X Corp. sued Media Matters and Mr. Hananoki in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. See id. ¶ 45 (citing X Corp. v. Media Matters for Am., No. 4:23-cv-1175 (N.D. Tex Nov. 20, 2023), ECF No. 1).1 And in the “weeks and months” that followed, “X Corp., through its international subsidiaries, filed suits in Ireland and Singapore.” Id. ¶ 46

[snip]

And the Court again granted a preliminary injunction on August 23, 2024, concluding that the Missouri CID likely amounted to First Amendment retaliation. See Media Matters for Am. v. Bailey, No. 24-cv-147, 2024 WL 3924573 (D.D.C. Aug. 23, 2024). Media Matters and the Missouri Attorney General ultimately settled their dispute in February 2025.

We know that Bailey likes to use the power of government to infringe on Democrats’ constitutional rights.

Which makes his appointment as FBI Deputy exceedingly dangerous.

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Trump’s Deep State Can’t Even Deep State Competently

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I was and still intend to write a post arguing that all of the coverage of this comment from Trump is wrong. As I rant on Nicole Sandler’s show today, what we saw in these few moments was Trump, whose super power is in being able to command attention, not only failing that, but flubbing his lines when he tried to reassert his command over attention focused on Jeffrey Epstein.

The conspiracy theorists who put Trump in office will not let him take ahold of this conspiracy.

What we see in this exchange is — more than at any time in the last ten years, I argue — Trump’s super power of commanding where people focus their attention failing him.

So I want to write about how everyone is getting this wrong.

But first, I want to talk about how Trump’s Deep State can’t even Deep State competently.

Trump’s attempt to tamp this down, predictably, had the opposite effect, both because infighting over who fucked up the incompetent attempt to tamp it down, and the conspiracy theories that have arisen in the void.

Conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer is at the pivot of both worlds, and she’s playing her part to perfection. She started things today by revealing that Dan Bongino — who actually doesn’t like how hard he has to work at FBI anyway — complaining about how the memo that attempted but failed to tamp all this down happened.

That led Todd Blanche, fresh off his efforts to make the Erez Reuveni disclosures worse, to weigh in, claiming there was no dispute about how to release the Epstein memo.

Meanwhile, Marc Caputo — who has close ties with Susie Wiles from way back — debunks Blanche’s claim of harmony,  describing that Wiles and Taylor Budowich witnessed anything but.

The intrigue: MAGA influencer Laura Loomer, a Bondi critic, first reported Friday on X that Bongino left work and that he and Patel were “furious” with the way Bondi had handled the case.

  • Some Trump advisers have criticized Bondi, but Trump “loves Pam and thinks she’s great,” a senior White House official said.
  • Those witnessing the Wednesday clash between Bondi and Bongino in the White House were Patel, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich.

The more important part of Caputo’s report, though, is that insiders blame Bongino for the “missing minute,” which provided the nutters reason to doubt the entire effort to tamp all this down.

Zoom in: At the center of the argument: a surveillance video from outside Epstein’s cell that the administration released, saying it was proof no one had entered the room before he killed himself.

  • The 10-hour video had what has widely been called a “missing minute,” fueling conspiracy theories in MAGA’s online world about a cover-up involving Epstein’s death.
  • The “missing minute,” authorities say, stemmed from an old surveillance recording system that goes down each day at midnight to reset and record anew. It takes a minute for that process to occur, which effectively means that 60 seconds of every day aren’t recorded.
  • Bongino — who had pushed Epstein conspiracy theories as a MAGA-friendly podcast host before President Trump appointed him to help lead the FBI — had found the video and touted it publicly and privately as proof that Epstein hadn’t been murdered.

That conclusion — shared by FBI Director Kash Patel, another conspiracy theorist-turned-insider — angered many in Trump’s MAGA base, criticism that increased after Axios first reported the release of the video and a related memo.

  • After the video’s “missing minute” was discovered, Bongino was blamed internally for the oversight, according to three sources.

Only, complaints about the video are only going to get worse. Wired describes that the metadata shows the video has been altered.

The “raw” file shows clear signs of having been processed using an Adobe product, most likely Premiere, based on metadata that specifically references file extensions used by the video editing software. According to experts, Adobe software, including Premiere and Photoshop, leaves traces in exported files, often embedding metadata that logs which assets were used and what actions were taken during editing. In this case, the metadata indicates the file was saved at least four times over a 23-minute span on May 23, 2025, by a Windows user account called “MJCOLE~1.” The metadata does not show whether the footage was modified before each time it was saved.

The embedded data suggest the video is not a continuous, unaltered export from a surveillance system, but a composite assembled from at least two separate MP4 files. The metadata includes references to Premiere project files and two specific source clips—2025-05-22 21-12-48.mp4 and 2025-05-22 16-35-21.mp4. These entries appear under a metadata section labeled “Ingredients,” part of Adobe’s internal schema for tracking source material used in edited exports. The metadata does not make clear where in the video the two clips were spliced together.

Hany Farid, a professor at UC Berkeley whose research focuses on digital forensics and misinformation, reviewed the metadata at WIRED’s request. Farid is a recognized expert in the analysis of digital images and the detection of manipulated media, including deepfakes. He has testified in numerous court cases involving digital evidence.

Farid says the metadata raises immediate concerns about chain of custody—the documented handling of digital evidence from collection to presentation in a courtroom. Just like physical evidence, he explains, digital evidence must be handled in a way that preserves its integrity; metadata, while not always precise, can provide important clues about whether that integrity has been compromised.

“If a lawyer brought me this file and asked if it was suitable for court, I’d say no. Go back to the source. Do it right,” Farid says. “Do a direct export from the original system—no monkey business.”

Farid points to another anomaly: The video’s aspect ratio shifts noticeably at several points. “Why am I suddenly seeing a different aspect ratio?” he asks.

It is abundantly likely that all of this is easily explained. I noted in my first post that the missing minute probably comes from MCC’s ancient surveillance equipment. And it sounds like someone packaged this up for Bongino.

Of course, none of that is going to matter if and when people confirm that the video doesn’t even show Epstein’s cell, as multiple people claim.

Every single wrinkle will only serve to feed the conspiracy theorists whose attention Trump cannot manage to command.

Here’s the thing, though. I think Bondi probably did shut down these investigations because they are inconvenient to Trump. Maybe it stems from nothing more than Trump’s demand to command attention; maybe it has to do with the known connections between Trump and the abuser looking damning no matter how close or far Trump is to the rape.

But because the Deputy Director of the FBI, an agency with thousands of people with expertise on this kind of thing, couldn’t manage to find someone who could hold his hand and explain basic things like chain of custody, they have all made it far, far worse.

Trump’s Deep State can’t even Deep State competently.

Update: The date of the saved video (May 23) was between the date when Bongino and Kash told Bartiromo that Epstein killed himself and the date when Bongino told Fox the FBI was going to release the video but first was, “taking time to clean up and enhance the video.”

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Pam Bondi Admits She Must Fire Kash Patel and Dan Bongino

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Even before Trump was inaugurated, I had great fun boosting expectations that Trump would release the Jeffrey Epstein files.

I didn’t do so because I believed there would be a massive Epstein release (partly because some of the conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein are not true and partly because what is true is that Trump is among the powerful men who are implicated). I didn’t do so because I believed any files would ever come out.

I did so because beliefs about Epstein are non-falsifiable. I did so because even if there were no damning materials tying Trump to Epstein, the President would still never be able to satisfy the expectations of his mob.

I did so because the promise (from Kash Patel, long before he was confirmed, and then from Pam Bondi) and expectation that Trump would release the files was an expectation that Trump’s supporters should expect to have fulfilled — after all he ordered DOJ to do just that, with the JFK, RFK, and MLK files.

But there’s no chance their expectations can ever been fulfilled. It was a way, I knew, where Trump was going to disappoint some of his most rabid fans.

Trump promised to release the secret files the continued secrecy of which have fueled decades of conspiracy theories, so why wouldn’t he release files about pedophilia, the legitimate concern that has fueled the Trump-supporting QAnoners?

I fueled such expectations on Xitter because if the demand to see the Epstein files ever took hold, Bondi would be stuck.

Then Bondi made things worse when she told Fox News that Epstein’s client file was on her desk for review. She made things worse when she orchestrated the re-release of the already-released files to a select group of right wing propagandists, all packaged up to look special, a spectacle that stoked divisions among MAGAts but also raised concerns that she was covering stuff up. She made things still worse when — responding to James Comer’s role in making things worse, when he claimed the Epstein files had been disappeared — she said there were tens of thousands of videos involving Epstein.

Kash Patel, who promised to release the files, and Dan Bongino, who begged his readers never to let go of this scandal? They fed the fever too with their years of spreading conspiracy theories about the Epstein files. And when FBI’s conspiracy theorists in chief tried to reverse course a month ago, it only further fueled suspicions.

Then Elon joined the fun, accusing Trump of being in the Epstein files as part of his tantrum against Trump (but then deleting that file). As someone who was also close to Ghislaine Maxwell, Elon might know!

Dan Goldman joined in, expressing, “grave concern about what appears to be a concerted effort by you to delay and even prevent the release of the Jeffrey Epstein Files,” and asking whether Trump’s identity was being redacted from any of the files. Robert Garcia and Stephen Lynch joined in, writing Pam Bondi a letter, asking Bondi to formally answer whether the Epstein files are being withheld — as Elon Musk alleged — because Trump is in them, and further asking (among other questions) whether Trump had a role in the delay of their release.

Bondi’s stonewalling, after both she and Kash promised everything would come quickly, was becoming the story.

So yesterday, DOJ and FBI released (or rather, made available to Axios without yet, apparently, releasing it via normal channels) a two-page unsigned notice (which may be on letterhead created for the purpose).

It included two main, credible conclusions:

  • Much of the material that FBI has depicts victims and any release of that material would retraumatize the victims.
  • FBI concluded (and Trump’s flunkies agree) that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. DOJ released two files (one unaltered, one enhanced, both with titles that do not even mention Epstein) showing that no one entered his cell the night he killed himself.

But there’s also a short, broader conclusion that is less sound.

This systematic review revealed no incriminating “client list.” There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties. [my emphasis]

Emphasis on credible?

Of course there’s a client list; one version of it was already released. There are also the names or descriptions shared by victims of the men who abused them. And while there may be no evidence in the FBI files that Epstein did blackmail Trump or anyone else, he had blackmail material on them. There’s certainly credible reason to believe that information is one of the reasons he was allowed to persist so long; it was useful for other powerful people, possibly even spooks in one or another country. That FBI didn’t uncover evidence confirming that others were involved in trafficking young people is dramatically different from saying that there’s no damning information implicating Epstein’s Johns.

But let’s assume for the moment that these conclusions are impeccable (and as I said, the decision not to release videos showing victims and the conclusion about the suicide are sound), that means that the people who’ve been claiming to have inside knowledge who promised to release the files — starting with FBI Director Kash Patel and FBI Deputy Direct Dan Bongino — are braying conspiracy theorists who cannot be trusted in any position of authority.

If it’s true that all this was a conspiracy theory, Kash and Bongino must leave the FBI, because they’ve just confessed they will endorse any kind of conspiracy theory to spin up Trump’s rubes. Pam Bondi must call for their resignations immediately, and while she’s at it, she should leave herself, because her original stunt release created the very expectations that she’s now trying to squelch.

They all promised to fulfill conspiracy theories and are now claiming they were lying about their certainty there was some there there.

Honestly, they’d be doing themselves a favor by doing so. But that won’t happen, and because these conspiracy theories are non-falsifiable, this attempt to make the entire promised reveal go away will simply fuel further conspiracy theories. Indeed, it already is.

Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, and Pam Bondi have now confirmed they are raging conspiracy theorists. And yet even that will not be enough to tamp down further conspiracy theories.

Update: I’m laughing my ass off. Doocy quoted Pam Bondi’s claim from an old interview, stating she had the client list on her desk. Karoline Leavitt spun it, with Doocy making big faces.

In addition, Unusual Whale notes that the last minute of the day (these may be PT time), from 11:58:59 to 11:59:59, missing from the video. Oh, and it turns out it’s not even the right cell.

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Three Data Points from the Padilla Assault

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I want to call out three data points regarding the assault of Senator Alex Padilla yesterday.

First, in media appearances and on this video, Senator Padilla explained that he was in the Federal building for a scheduled briefing on the Federal response in Los Angeles. There was a delay so he asked to go to the presser. As he describes it, a Guard and an FBI Agent escorted him to the presser.

While I was waiting for the briefing, I learned that just down the hall from where I was, Secretary Noem from the Department of Homeland Security was having a press conference, Now Secretary Noem and the Department — we have been calling on and we have been sending letters to since the beginning of the year requesting more information as to what and why they are doing, with little to no response. And so I thought let me go over there, listen in on the press conference, maybe they’re sharing some important information. And while I did that, escorted over there by a National Guardsman and an FBI agent, …

This makes Dan Bongino’s description of the event entirely deceptive.

If the FBI brought him to the presser, it doesn’t matter whether he had his Senate pin. The FBI knew his identity. And yet an FBI agent was involved in the assault on Padilla regardless.

Secondly, in a presser, Gavin Newsom returned to comments about his call, last Friday night, with Donald Trump.

Oh, I would love to share the readout but I revere the office of presidency so I’ll keep it in confidence. He has quite literally made up components of that conversation. Um, he’s been a stone cold liar about what he said we talked about. He never discussed the National Guard, period, full stop. I would love to share with you what we actually talked about. That would send shivers up your spine.

[snip]

We discussed for a nanosecond Los Angeles and he immediately zigged and zagged to seven or eight other topics. Some extraordinarily familiar. And some extraordinarily remarkable considering the world we’re living in.

Again, after a hearing before Charles Breyer on the lawsuit, at which the substance of that call — whether Trump actually raised the Guard — was an issue, Newsom accused Trump of making up components of the conversation and then said the actual content of the call “would send shivers up your spine” but he wasn’t sharing it because “I revere the office of the presidency.”

I don’t doubt that some deference to the Office of the President is one reason Newsom hasn’t told us what Trump said. After all, he no doubt still harbors ambitions to one day occupy that office. The tenor of the lawsuit challenging Trump adopts a sober legal approach, avoiding some things — like Whiskey Pete’s apparent ignorance of basic facts about the deployment (such as whether the Marines would come from Camp Pendleton or, as is the case, Twentynine Palms and when they finished training for the deployment) — that would be great politically but shift the focus away from Trump and onto Hegseth’s incompetence. In the lawsuit (as distinct from his public messaging, including this presser) Newsom has been making a constitutional argument, not a political one.

The government seems to understand it is vulnerable to Newsom’s claim that Trump fabricated parts of the conversation. As I noted, in their response to the lawsuit they relied on an erroneous Fox News report on the timing of the call, not the readout of the call that the White House presumably has.

At approximately 10:23pm PT that night, President Trump called Governor Newsom. The President informed Governor Newsom of the dangers that federal personnel and property were being subjected to and directed him to take action to stop the violence.4

4
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-brings-receipts-he-called-newsom-amid-la-riots-california-gov-claims-wasnt-even-voicemail.amp; see also https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/06/09/watch-governor-newsom-discusses-donald-trumps-mess-inlos-angeles/ (Governor Newsom concurring that the call took place)

They do not include any other source to substantiate the claim that “the President informed Governor Newsom,” and in the hearing yesterday DOJ did not back the specific claims Trump and Steve Cheung made to Fox (though Brett Shumate did claim that something about the call led Trump to conclude the laws were not being executed, one basis DOJ relied on to claim the usurpation was legal).

And so, Newsom hinted at more, but claimed he couldn’t share it — as if threatening to share the real content of the call would damage Trump (or make his depravity clear).

I mean, it’s clear Trump said something. After all, before the call, Trump threatened to cut off all funding to CA (a threat that has not yet manifested, even though it was presented as imminent). After the call, Newsom came out with two messages: Trump is a “Stone cold liar” and “there’s no working with the President. There’s only working for him. And I will never work for Donald Trump.”

I suspect Newsom is daring Trump to make him share the content of the call (and, likely, testing to see what kind of records Trump is willing to show). I suspect Newsom that call is important not just because of what Trump didn’t say, about the Guard deployment, but what he did say before he invaded California.

I suspect Trump tried to make a deal. Trump tried to get Newsom to work for him. And when Newsom refused, Trump invaded.

Which brings me to the last data point. In one clip of the NBC footage from the Padilla assault — which, of course, came just as Kristi Noem claimed she was going to liberate Los Angeles  from government by their duly elected Governor and Mayor — Peter Hamby spied Corey Lewandowski overseeing the aftermath of the assault.

Lewandowski, of course, has a history of assaulting people as he removed them from Trump events.

What gets made of the Padilla assault remains very much contested. Right wing propagandists — from Noem and her staffers to Bongino to members of Congress — are trying to claim that a Latino man obviously couldn’t be assumed to be a Senator elected by 6.6 million Californians, not even if an FBI agent escorted him into that room. That response gives up the game, of course: this was Trump’s racist Administration treating one of the most powerful Latino’s in the country just like they’re treating the day laborers and farmworkers they’re chasing down fields.

But it comes amid a larger context — the context in which Gavin Newsom and Donald Trump are directly combatting whether Trump may be king.

Update: Corrected the timing of Newsom’s comment. It happened after Breyer issued his ruling.

Update: NYT quotes Padilla claiming Lewandowski came running down the hall telling people to let him go.

On the videos, Mr. Padilla appeared stunned but repeatedly said he was a U.S. senator. In an interview hours later, Mr. Padilla said that he had demanded to know why he had been detained and where he was being escorted “when of all people, Corey Lewandowski” — a combative former Trump campaign aide and adviser to Ms. Noem — “comes running down the hall and he starts yelling, ‘Let him go! Let him go!’”

Update: In response to James Comer and Clay Higgins’ excitement about targeting Newsom and Karen Bass for investigation, Newsom’s office promises, “some highly unusual communications from the White House” and then, in the next tweet, highlighs Newsom’s comment.

So, yeah, he was hoping someone would force him to turn this over and two of the dumbest members of Congress complied.

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