The bitter blame game over the handling of the investigation into the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein erupted in public on Friday between Attorney General Pam Bondi and the senior leadership of the F.B.I., particularly the bureau’s deputy director, Dan Bongino.
Ms. Bondi and her allies believe that Mr. Bongino, who parlayed a he-man image and promotion of conspiracies into a top law enforcement job, planted stories in the conservative news media blaming Ms. Bondi for the backlash after an announcement earlier this week that the Epstein case would be closed, according to officials close to the situation. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss conversations intended to be private.
It erupted into an angry face-to-face confrontation at the White House on Wednesday, when an irate Ms. Bondi accused Mr. Bongino of leaking information to the news media in the presence of the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, the White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and one of her deputies, Taylor Budowich. Mr. Bongino denied it, they said.
Mr. Bongino, during an another confrontation within the past week, told Ms. Bondi she had overhyped the likelihood that a review of the case undertaken by the Justice Department and F.B.I. this year would reveal a list of Mr. Epstein’s sex-trafficking clients, and possibly raise questions about his 2019 death by hanging in custody, which was ruled a suicide.
But, to an extent, Ms. Bondi has been trying to put a political fire that Mr. Bongino himself helped to ignite: Mr. Bongino, who oversaw the deployment of agents to scour video and documents in the case, pushed the idea of a vast cover-up in the Epstein case as the host of a popular and lucrative podcast.
On Friday, a high-profile Bongino booster — the far-right influencer and conspiracist Laura Loomer — claimed, in two dramatic social media posts, that the bureau’s deputy director had taken Friday off to collect his thoughts, and was “now seriously thinking about RESIGNING” over Ms. Bondi’s actions in the Epstein case.
A person close to Mr. Bongino did not dispute her characterization, describing him as very angry and considering a range of options, including quitting.
It would not be the first time Mr. Bongino, who has struggled to retain credibility with the right-wing base while overseeing the bureau’s day-to-day-operations, has suggested the pressures of the job were getting to him: “People ask all the time, ‘Do you like it?’ No. I don’t,” he told Fox News last month.
Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the F.B.I. had no comment.
Senior Justice Department officials insisted that both Mr. Bongino and Mr. Patel had worked closely with her top advisers to review the evidence in the case and had jointly decided on closing the investigation, and are as responsible for the backlash as she is.
Todd Blanche, Ms. Bondi’s top deputy, posted a statement on social media early Friday to hammer home that point, in response to articles and social media posts suggesting that F.B.I. leadership was not entirely on board with the decision to move on.
“I worked closely with @FBIDirectorKash and @FBIDDBongino on the joint FBI and DOJ memo regarding the Epstein Files,” wrote Mr. Blanche, who led President Trump’s criminal defense team before being tapped for his current post.
“All of us signed off on the contents of the memo and the conclusions stated in the memo. The suggestion by anyone that there was any daylight between the FBI and DOJ leadership on this memo’s composition and release is patently false,” he added.
Ms. Bondi was not part of those discussions, an official said, and signed off on the decision reached by Mr. Blanche, Mr. Patel and Mr. Bongino.
It is unclear how Mr. Trump, who spent significant time with Mr. Epstein, a financier who cultivated the wealthy, powerful and famous, will respond to the infighting.
But he has implored his supporters, many of them Epstein obsessives, to move on.
“You still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” Mr. Trump, visibly exasperated, asked a reporter at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, the day after the Justice Department released a memo concluding that “no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted” in the investigation of the case.
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.
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