FBI’s Patel and Bongino: Hostages of the Deep State?

Kash Patel and Dan Bongino have been stalwart allies of the conservative movement—and good friends of Judicial Watch—for many years. Judicial Watch applauded their appointments as director and deputy director of the FBI. Expectations were high. In a statement following Patel’s confirmation as FBI director, JW President Tom Fitton noted that Patel has “his work set out for him.”  He called on Patel to “bring transparency and accountability back to an agency that became irredeemably corrupt and the tip of the spear in unfettered lawfare against any American seen as a threat to the ruling class. From sitting on Hunter Biden’s laptop in order to influence the 2020 election, the raid of President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, and the censorship of Americans, to the targeting of traditional Catholics, the FBI has shown itself as a tainted domestic and intelligence service.”

Veteran Washington reformers like Fitton understand that Patel’s time for true change is limited. The Deep State, the forces of inertia, and the political calendar are all working against him. These days, as well, conservative insiders are alarmed by mounting signs that Patel and Bongino have been taken hostage by the Deep State consensus and are failing to bring meaningful change to the FBI.

An early warning sign came in April when Patel plucked Steven Jensen from exile in Columbia, South Carolina, and appointed him head of the FBI’s powerful Washington Field Office. Conservatives were aghast. As chief of the Domestic Terrorism Section at FBI headquarters in 2020 and 2021, Jensen led a highly damaging law-enforcement campaign against the January 6 protestors, raising the specter of domestic terrorism.

Jensen was “a true believer in Joe Biden’s domestic terrorism narrative,” retired FBI supervisor George Hill told Miranda Devine of the New York Post, “…that every Trump supporter in and around Capitol Hill [on January 6] was an insurrectionist, a white supremacist and probably violent.”

Jensen “set up the infrastructure for that [domestic terrorism narrative],” Hill told Devine. “He made the decisions, set up the mechanisms whereby all the cases would be opened around the country to give the picture that this was a nationwide problem. Previously it would have been opened up [as one case with multiple suspects] in Washington — but by opening it that way, you allowed [then-FBI Director] Chris Wray to sit in Congress and say domestic terrorism was a nationwide problem.”

Patel and Bongino vigorously defended Jensen. Appearing on Fox News, they urged patience. “Just wait,” Bongino said, “and you’ll see. Nothing we’re doing—nothing—is by accident.”

Two months later, we’re still waiting.

Meanwhile, more concerns have surfaced. Media reports about Patel’s jet-setting lifestyle and love of sporting events can largely be dismissed as sour grapes from the opposition press. But the disquiet about the FBI’s lack of transparency and failure to mount significant investigations is not easily ignored.

Exhibit A is the uproar over the Jeffrey Epstein files. In February, following a much-ballyhooed campaign promising new disclosures, Attorney General Pam Bondi released an underwhelming batch of documents, most of which turned out to be already in the public domain or heavily redacted. Bondi pinned the blame on the FBI and promised more documents to come as soon as the next day. No documents were forthcoming. Judicial Watch repeatedly asked the FBI to turn over the Epstein files under the Freedom of Information Act. The FBI did not respond to the JW requests and in April, Judicial Watch sued for the records. “The Justice Department needs to respond to public demands for transparency under law and release the Epstein files under FOIA,” said JW’s Fitton.

The Epstein case is not the only instance of a troubling lack of transparency at the Justice Department and the FBI. Officials have been stonewalling Judicial Watch—the national leader in FOIA actions related to government corruption—in some cases for years.

Seven years ago, for example, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA lawsuit for text messages between FBI agents involved in the bogus “Russia Collusion” investigation of Donald Trump. The FBI has refused to turn over many of the texts and related documents—or even disclose what they are withholding.

JW sued the Justice Department—twice, in 2023 and 2024—for communications surrounding the controversial Hunter Biden laptop story. And in October 2024, JW sued the Justice Department for communications among top officials about anti-Trump social media posts by a senior agent involved in an investigation of a Florida  assassination attempt against Trump.

The Justice Department and FBI response to these requests? Stonewalls, silence, and foot-dragging.

Installation in key positions of Deep State actors like Jensen and lack of transparency are not the only strikes against Bondi, Patel, and Bongino. Perhaps most disturbing is their failure to act decisively to reduce the vast powers of the Justice Department and the FBI.

“President Trump was almost jailed by his own Justice Department in his first term,” Steve Bannon recently reminded viewers in a War Room interview with Fitton. It’s a segment worth viewing in its entirety.

“There’s no evidence the FBI thinks it is subject to the rule of law,” Fitton said. “Kash Patel and Pam Bondi need to take a much more aggressive [approach] and have an expansive understanding as to what their opportunities and roles are.”

“It’s a systemic problem,” Bannon said. “It’s not just a personnel problem. [The FBI] has to be taken apart brick by brick.”

The outlines of an aggressive inquiry that would set the stage for reducing the power of the Justice Department and FBI are obvious: get to the bottom of the targeting of Trump and his allies in the Russiagate scandal; look at the FBI role in the Hunter Biden laptop case and the limiting of the story’s media circulation at a critical moment in the 2020 election; expose the roots of the 2022 Mar-a-Lago raid; connect the dots of FBI targeting of conservative Catholics, parents attending school board meetings, and pro-life groups.

Doubtless Bondi, Patel, and Bongino have their hands full managing the day-to-day affairs of their giant bureaucracies. Conservatives still wish them well, but time is running out. And the president who promised to “demolish the Deep State” is watching from the White House. They will not be forgiven for bungling a historic opportunity.

#

Micah Morrison is chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch. Tips: [email protected]

Investigative Bulletin is published by Judicial Watch. Reprints and media inquiries: [email protected]