Updated June 4, 2025 at 5:02 AM EDT
The current leaders of the FBI are men who spent years building suspicions and entertaining conspiracy theories about the agency they now run.
So after the bureau's deputy director, Dan Bongino, somberly told Fox Business's Maria Bartiromo last month he now believes sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein killed himself, a wave of snickering, exasperation and anger followed close behind.
"I've never seen anyone so sad that the deep state didn't kill someone," joked Ronny Chieng on Comedy Central's The Daily Show.
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson's high pitched laugh ricocheted around his home studio as he and podcaster Shawn Ryan dismissed Bongino's declaration and traded their own theories about Epstein's life and death.
"I think it was a blackmail operation run by the CIA and the Israeli intel services, and probably others. You know, French intelligence always has a hand in everything, I've noticed, so probably them too," said Carlson, who also defended Bongino.
There's been public skepticism about Epstein's 2019 suicide across the political spectrum for years. Countless details of the disgraced financier's crimes and demise, including the high society circles he inhabited, lend themselves to popular conspiratorial themes.
But on the right, Epstein's story has been a key ingredient in partisan narratives about what often gets called "the deep state" — that's the conspiracist idea that there are entrenched government officials working to undermine President Trump. Former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are frequently among the central, sinister characters in these tales, while Trump, who was president when Epstein died in federal custody, is rarely invoked, despite his long friendship with Epstein.
As a podcaster, Bongino openly questioned official reports that Epstein, who was arrested for a series of sexual crimes with underaged girls, died by suicide.
"Listen, that Jeffrey Epstein story is a big deal, please do not let that story go. Keep your eye on this," he implored his audience of millions in 2023.
As for FBI Director Kash Patel, before Trump picked him to run the bureau, he said it should be easy for the agency to release a list of Epstein's associates.
"Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are," Patel said, addressing the then-leaders of the FBI on pro-Trump influencer Benny Johnson's YouTube show in 2023.
While Bongino and Patel faced some social media backlash after their interview with Bartioromo, rather than collectively turning on the pair, many in conspiracy-minded or pro-Trump media quickly turned to speculating about what hidden forces were now causing the shift in their tunes.
"There's a part of me that believes Trump is behind all of this," said former multilevel marketing mogul and YouTuber Patrick Bet-David on his show, "because Trump wants to use this as leverage to negotiate against the enemy."
On a QAnon-promoting YouTube channel, host and election denial activist Ashley Epp wondered aloud about the "pregnant pause" she heard in Patel's answer.
"I think they're protecting an ongoing investigation," said Epp, offering her belief that Epstein is likely still alive and in hiding.
'Pretzel-like defenses'
"There's always something that turns a dis-confirmation into a confirmation," said Mike Rothschild, a journalist and author who focuses on conspiracy theories.
"So you find that after the initial anger at what Patel and Bongino said wears off," he said, "then the really sort of pretzel-like defenses start of having to justify why there's a bigger reason why these guys said something."
Rothschild said this mental process is actually where QAnon conspiracy theories came from during Trump's first term. He said "Q" followers believed a heroic Trump was going to lead a "storm" of arrests and executions of high-profile figures for their involvement in supposed satanic pedophile cabals.
"QAnon emerged as a way to explain, well, it's happening. It's just happening in secret. And we have to do it in a way that the normies can't figure out and push back against," said Rothschild.
This tendency played out in real time in the live-comments on "The Shipwreck Show," an online streaming show on a channel that promotes QAnon narratives, even as pseudonymous host Shipwreck expressed her own sense of betrayal.
"'Trust the plan.' I'm not going to do that. I want better answers than we've been getting. I want what we've been promised and if you can't give us what you promised then why did you promise it to us in the first place?" she said, arguing with her own audience.
"Some people say Epstein is in protective custody, which is why Dan and Kash [have] to say that right now. That makes sense to me," wrote one commenter.
"could just be a test for our FAITH AND STRENGTH stay vigilant," offered another.
In the show's next segments, Shipwreck moved on to questioning whether Harvey Weinstein may have been wrongly convicted of rape and discussing sourdough starters.
Uncomfortable moments
The interview with Fox Business is not the first time managing public demand for information about Epstein has proved challenging for the Trump administration. Attorney General Pam Bondi faced backlash after she gave a group of right-wing media influencers binders that turned out to contain already-public information about the case.
Epstein's death, QAnon and the "deep state" are also not the only conspiracy theories that have helped elevate the profiles of people who are now part of the Trump administration. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. built a following by promoting the disproven theory that measles vaccines cause autism. But following a measles outbreak in Texas, Kennedy endorsed the MMR vaccine.
"A lot of the big anti-vax figures were openly tweeting like, how could you say this? You know, we voted for Trump to get big pharma out of politics," said Rothschild. "And like days later, he was back saying, 'Well, you know, the vaccine is not really effective, I don't really recommend it."
He said officials who've helped boost conspiracy theories are likely to continue to face uncomfortable moments as they try to govern. Some may even fall out of favor with their former followers, but the beliefs themselves aren't going anywhere.
As for releasing more on Epstein's death, Bongino was back on Fox last week promising "disclosure on this coming shortly."
Copyright 2025 NPR