(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Last week, conservative media personality Tucker Carlson said that President Donald Trump shut down the investigations into the attempts on his life in 2024.
Carlson said he was personally informed of this by Dan Bongino, who was FBI deputy director at the time. Carlson said his team had just obtained a trove of social media data from Thomas Crooks, the man who allegedly shot at Trump during a campaign rally on July 13, 2024. Carlson called Bongino before releasing a documentary on his findings. Bongino purportedly wasn’t too thrilled.
“Dan Bongino became hysterical on the phone … He was clearly terrified. Ultimately, after a long series of text exchanges, which I still have of course, and phone conversations, he said, ‘Take it up with Trump. He’s the one who shut down the investigation,’” Carlson said in an interview with Mario Nawfal.
🚨🇺🇸 A terrified Bongino told Tucker that Trump shut down the Butler investigation himself.
Tucker says he accidentally obtained the Thomas Crooks social media posts the FBI claimed didn't exist, then called Kash Patel and Dan Bongino looking for answers.
Bongino, a friend of… https://t.co/fP090liFgJ pic.twitter.com/RR08fJ1Ba2
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) June 12, 2026
“That was the moment when I realized, ‘Oh wow.’ There’s no good explanation for shutting down an investigation into your own attempted murder. This is not what we’ve been told it was.”
Bongino strongly denied Carlson’s claims. On his own show, he called Carlson a liar and purported to debunk the notion that Trump ordered the investigations closed.
Bongino said that he, FBI Director Kashyap Patel, and Attorney General Pam Bondi briefed Trump on the matter last year. According to Bongino, Trump is satisfied with the FBI’s findings that Crooks and the second would-be assassin, Ryan Routh, were both lone wolves, and that there’s no deeper conspiracy involved in either case.
🚨 Dan Bongino blows up Tucker Carlson's credibility & claim that "Trump covered up the Butler Shooting"
Bongino brought the receipts too, something Tucker Carlson did not do. Intentionally.
The whole 12 minutes is worth watching 🔥 pic.twitter.com/zF1deby89w
— J (@JayTC53) June 12, 2026
However, Bongino apparently never actually investigated the assassination attempts himself.
Indeed, Bongino was sworn in as FBI deputy director on March 17, 2025. By March 28, 2025, Trump said he had been briefed by the FBI on the assassination attempts—and that he believed the official narrative. That means Bongino would have had to have briefed Trump on the assassination attempts within days of taking office—meaning that he wouldn’t have had any time to review the evidence.
Moreover, Trump initially expressed dissatisfaction with the answers he received from the FBI. In April 2025, he seemed to still have question about Crooks and his family.
“I don’t know what to believe. I really don’t… the father’s got the ultimate law firm — a white shoe law firm from Pittsburgh. They have a lawyer who IBM would hire. Where did he get this person?” Trump said, referring to the fact that Matthew and Mary hired the prestigious law firm Quinn Logue. “I’ll be honest: It has not been explained to me perfectly by the Secret Service or FBI.”
.@POTUS on the investigations into the two assassination attempts against him: "I don't know what to believe." pic.twitter.com/2wr7dZ0j99
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 16, 2025
After initially expressing doubts, Trump again backtracked days later, telling reporters that he was briefed — and that he’s keeping what was told to him secret.
“Can you confirm the Butler investigation? Are you getting intelligence briefings?” a reporter asked Trump during a press scrum, to which Trump responded: “I have. I’ll keep that to myself. It’s very personal.”
Trump has largely been silent on the matter since then.
In May 2025, Bongino and Patel said the case was closed.
Bongino, once one of the government’s fiercest critics on his radio show, told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo in May 2025 that there was no “‘there there” when asked about a wider conspiracy.
Patel sang a similar tune, telling Bartiromo that the Butler case was closed. “I don’t know that there’s more to know, but you’re going to know everything we know,” Patel added to Fox News’s Bret Baier around the same time.
Upon hearing Patel’s announcement, this author filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the 1,000-plus interview reports the FBI created while investigating the Butler case. However, the FBI denied that request on the grounds that the Butler case was still open — an assertion that directly contradicted what Patel told Fox News.
After that, Bongino and Patel claimed that the case was still open, but inactive.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
