As I write this, Attorney General Bondi and FBI Director Patel seem to be hostage to rogue FBI leadership at the Bureau’s New York Field Office in a standoff over the Jeffrey Epstein files. If Bondi and Patel aren’t provided, and subsequently release to the public, these files immediately, they risk collapsing their own credibility and that of President Trump. They are playing a very dangerous game.

If the American people said anything in the November 2024 election, it was, “We’ve had enough! No more games. No more playing us for fools. Get ‘er done!”

So far, President Trump has been doing an extraordinary job of getting ‘er done in a breathtakingly rapid, seemingly endless, series of bold moves to rein in an astonishingly bloated and out-of-control federal bureaucracy. That blob-like bureaucracy seemed almost to be mocking the people who are funding it by blowing through their hard-earned and mindlessly wasted tax dollars, to pay for things like Sesame Street-in-Iraq, maintenance of terrorist groups around the world, and transgenderism-everywhere-for-everyone.

And now we have the spectacle of AG Bondi telling Jesse Watters that there is horrible, horrible stuff sitting on her desk about Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophile ring and operation, which apparently encompassed the high-and-mighty political, financial and media elite. And she is going to reveal it all, gosh darn it. Someday. After proper “review.” Sometime. But oh wait. She’s been informed that the agents in the FBI’s New York office have failed to provide, to her surprise and amazement of course, many records about the Epstein case still in their possession. And that will not stand, by golly! She has ordered those records to be provided to her by 0800 the next day.

The next day rolls around and AG Bondi makes her “big reveal”, oddly only to a select few right-wing alternative media types, in a first installment. Which turns out to be the same old, same old flight logs and contact lists that had already been out there. What a big goose egg.

So, now, we are told, AG Bondi and her underling, FBI Director Kash Patel, in whom we have all held such high hopes, are being thwarted by dastardly recalcitrant FBI leaders in New York.

Seriously? Here’s a tip to AG Bondi and Director Patel: You are not doing your boss, President Trump, proud. In fact, if you don’t change your ways fast, you might represent for him the best opportunity to impress the rest of the populace with a post on Truth Social directed to you both that reads: “You’re fired!” Harsh? Maybe. But how about you stop making public pronouncements about your displeasure with FBINY, send five FBI SWAT teams up to the New York office, seize all FBI files related to Epstein, and if a single Bureau employee so much as raises a tiny whisper of protest, sack him/her on the spot? Sounds like a plan to me.

Because, you know what? Your pusillanimous weak-kneed kowtowing to Deep State Blob-dwelling rogue FBI honchos in New York is precisely what we—the American People—have come to expect and despise about feckless Republican politicians whom we have elected over and over again in hopes of achieving a different result. (See one Mike Johnson as Exhibit A in this department.)

Hey, remember how the FBI sent a small army to raid Mar-a-Lago a while back, rifle through the former First Lady’s underwear drawer, plant phony SECRET cover sheets amongst various and sundry paperwork that we were assured threatened national security in the former President’s highly secure estate, if they were released, even though President Trump had complete authority to have declassified those records while he was still president?

Right, well how about mounting a similar raid operation against the New York Field Office of the FBI? How rich that would be. Sure, it might not be a great look for the FBI. But let’s face it. This agency has fallen into such disrepute over the last 10 years that a little internecine civil war spectacle would actually be refreshing entertainment for a lot of us. And I do believe the majority of the FBI’s line agents are good, hardworking patriotic Americans who sincerely want to fight the bad guys. It’s just unfortunate, as former FBI agent whistleblower and patriot, Garret O’Boyle recently said, that the Bureau has been turned into a politically weaponized Secret Police force.

President Trump should take note. And quickly. Apparently, two of his top picks, and seemingly stellar choices to lead his law enforcement establishment, Ms. Bondi and Mr. Patel, are showing signs of weakness. Just as the late, great British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher warned a dithering US President George H.W. Bush in the lead-up to the first Gulf War not to get “wobbly in the knees,” President Trump better get on the horn quickly with the AG and FBI Director and tell them what’s what. Or hit the road.

I want to see both of these individuals succeed in their roles as much as anyone. But if they cannot handle and address dissension within their own ranks, how are they going to take on global terrorists, drug trafficking organizations, Russian and Chinese spies, theocratic Iranian nukeniks, insane North Korean despots or even Democrat Deep State Fifth Columnists?

We need boldness in all of our national leaders right now more than ever. I mean boldness of a caliber we haven’t seen in this country since World War II. We seem to have such a leader in Donald Trump. Now he must ensure that all of the people executing his orders immediately below him are possessed of the same iron character.

If they do not possess such character, and they continue to play sophistic games with the American people, the danger to America is immense.

William F. Marshall has been an intelligence analyst and investigator in the government, private, and non-profit sectors for more than 35 years. He is a senior investigator for Judicial Watch, Inc., and has been a contributor to Townhall, American Thinker, Epoch Times, The Federalist, American Greatness, and other publications. (The views expressed are the author’s alone, and not necessarily those of Judicial Watch.)