• FBI Director Kash Patel and former deputy Dan Bongino used a podcast appearance to tout crime statistics while ignoring the Epstein files controversy that has dogged both men
• A 115-page report from active FBI agents described the bureau under their leadership as a "rudderless ship," contradicting the rosy picture painted in the interview
• Criminologists say the crime decline Patel credited to Trump administration policies began years earlier during the post-pandemic recovery

WASHINGTON, DC (TDR) — FBI Director Kash Patel and former deputy director Dan Bongino spent more than 20 minutes congratulating each other during a Tuesday appearance on The Dan Bongino Show, touting what they called historic crime reductions while conspicuously avoiding the Epstein files controversy that has fueled fierce criticism from their own political allies.

The 23-minute exchange read more like a mutual performance review than a policy discussion. Bongino opened by telling Patel that the two had done "a pretty good job" at the FBI, adding that "it really isn't hard when you focus on the bad guys."

Patel responded with effusive praise of his own.

"It's not hard to do the job you signed up for if you're allowed to do the job you signed up for, and President Trump and this administration backs law enforcement and gave us the resources and gave us the autonomy."

The FBI director held up a brochure with statistics from their first year, citing a 20% drop in the national murder rate, a 32% increase in fentanyl seizures, and the capture of six of the FBI's ten most wanted fugitives.

"These numbers are truly historic and that was the foundational tectonic shift you and I put into place in the FBI to let the cops go out there and be cops."

Bongino, who left the FBI in January after less than a year as deputy director, was equally generous with credit. When Patel boasted about capturing additional fugitives after Bongino's departure, the former deputy replied simply: "Good job." Patel pushed back, insisting, "Those six go to you. You laid the groundwork for it."

What the Interview Ignored: Epstein and Internal Revolt

What went unmentioned during the exchange was arguably more significant than what was said. The Epstein files — the single issue that generated the most criticism of both men from within Trump's own base — received zero discussion during the 23-minute interview.

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This silence came just days after Bongino was criticized on social media for portraying himself as an Epstein transparency advocate despite having signed off on closing the FBI's investigation into potential co-conspirators. Former FBI agent Steve Friend responded bluntly on X, asking Bongino how he could claim credit for transparency when he "signed off on closing the f*cking investigation."

The omission also followed a formal oversight request from Senator Dick Durbin pressing both Patel and Bongino on discrepancies in how the administration handled Epstein-related records — including allegations that FBI personnel were instructed to flag any documents mentioning President Donald Trump.

Also absent from the interview was any acknowledgment of the scathing 115-page report authored by 24 active-duty and retired FBI agents that characterized the bureau under Patel and Bongino's leadership as a "rudderless ship" that was "all f–ked up." The December 2025 assessment described Patel as being "in over his head" and Bongino as "something of a clown," with multiple agents accusing the pair of an "unfortunate obsession with social media" and being "too often concerned with building their own personal résumés."

Bongino dismissed that report at the time as "gossipy nonsense" from agents with "a clear agenda."

Crime Statistics: Credit Where It's Due?

The crime numbers Patel touted are real, but the credit he claimed is disputed. A Council on Criminal Justice analysis of 40 major cities confirmed a roughly 21% decline in homicides in 2025 — the steepest single-year drop on record. However, the same data shows the decline is part of a multi-year downward trend that began during the Biden administration as pandemic-era disruptions subsided.

"We see very confident claims of credit in abundance, but scarce hard evidence to back them up," said CCJ president Adam Gelb, noting that the consistent decline across the country "really suggests that everything's happening at the macro level."

Criminologist Alexis Piquero, former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics and a professor at the University of Miami, offered broader context for the trend.

"When COVID hit, and the world shut down, we basically turned off the water with respect to prevention and intervention strategies. And then it took about two or three years for the water to be turned back on."

The Major Cities Chiefs Association reported year-over-year homicide reductions under Biden in 2022, 2023, and 2024 — a trajectory that preceded any Trump-era policy changes.

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Meanwhile, Patel's claim of nearly 200% more FBI arrests in 2025 has drawn scrutiny from agents who note that many of those arrests involved immigration-related operations conducted alongside ICE — a redeployment that some career agents described in the internal report as diverting resources from traditional FBI investigative priorities.

The Bigger Picture

The interview underscored a pattern that has defined Patel's tenure: impressive-sounding statistics delivered through friendly media platforms, paired with avoidance of the institutional questions that matter most to accountability-minded observers across the political spectrum.

After Bongino's departure, Patel replaced him with Christopher Raia, a 22-year career FBI agent — a move that restored the decades-long tradition of having an experienced bureau insider in the deputy role. The choice itself was a quiet acknowledgment that the experiment of installing media personalities atop the nation's premier investigative agency had its limits.

If the FBI's crime statistics reflect genuine institutional progress, why do the leaders who claim credit avoid addressing the internal assessments that paint a starkly different picture of bureau operations — and does the answer to that question change depending on which audience they're speaking to?

Sources

This report was compiled using information from Mediaite's coverage of the Bongino-Patel interview, The Daily Caller's reporting on the Epstein omission, NBC News' coverage of Bongino's return to podcasting, TIME's analysis of falling crime rates, The Hill's reporting on the FBI agents' report, official data from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program, Fox News' coverage of Bongino's departure, CNN's reporting on the Raia appointment, oversight letters from the Senate Judiciary Committee, and DHS crime data on violent crime trends.

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