Dan Bongino Announces Tragic Death Of Close Friend
Joe Armacost, who was very well known as “Producer Joe” from “The Dan Bongino Show,” passed away over the weekend after a battle with ALS.
“Joe, Rest peacefully with The Lord,” FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino announced in an X post on Monday.
“We lost Joe over the weekend. He passed away on Saturday, July 19th,” added WCBM host Sean Casey during Monday’s installment of Morning Drive With Casey & Elliot.
“A bright light was extinguished when Joe Armacost passed. I was informed by his good friend Tommy Levin, who was staying, he was staying with Tommy during his battle and struggles with ALS. Tommy told me that the colonel had left the building, a reference to one of Joe’s incredible characters. And I mentioned Joe had been struggling with ALS over the past year, but just recently officially diagnosed after a visit to Johns Hopkins,” Casey noted further.
Armacost had been living in Florida after the conclusion of The Dan Bongino Show, which ended when the top-rated host accepted President Trump’s offer to become Deputy Director of the FBI.
Armacost was a well-known figure in the radio and podcasting world, credited as the lead producer on more than 2,900 episodes. Beyond his media work, he was a passionate musician with a sharp sense of humor that frequently came through on The Dan Bongino Show and his other projects.
“Joe was an incredible guy who shared the stage in a rock band with my dad back in the day. His great sense of humor and staunch conservative values made him unforgettable—he produced at WCBM, the local conservative AM radio station, before moving on to produce for [Dan Bongino] when the Dan Bongino podcast launched,” The Constitution Project, a close family friend of Armacost’s, posted on the X platform.
“I’ll never forget his hilarious on-air personas as the 7-11 Guy and the Colonel. My heartfelt condolences to Jim and the rest of his family,” the post continued. “Joe will be sorely missed. … Rest in peace, friend.”
Meanwhile, Bongino has returned to work after a disagreement with Attorney General Pam Bondi over the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation prompted him to consider resigning.
Multiple sources said that Bongino returned to work after taking several personal days nearly two weeks ago, but his future with the agency remains unknown following the heated discussion with Bondi.
The FBI and DOJ delivered a document this week summarizing a review of the case against Epstein, who died in his Manhattan prison cell on August 10, 2019.
The handling of the Epstein files has sparked a schism within Trump’s MAGA supporters, with some supporting Bongino if he had quit in protest of the case’s alleged lack of openness.
The DOJ is pushing to unseal long-secret grand jury transcripts from the Epstein case, claiming “intense public interest” in the famed sex trafficking probe, as directed by Bondi.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche filed the motion in Manhattan federal court, urging a judge to release transcripts from Epstein’s 2019 grand jury proceedings and the prosecution of Epstein’s convicted associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, as part of the department’s new transparency push.
Earlier this month, the DOJ and FBI released a memorandum outlining an “exhaustive review” of their Epstein investigation files. That internal assessment attempted to discover whether any evidence might support prosecuting more individuals but determined that “no such evidence was uncovered” against any uncharged third parties.
While the department continues to support the memo’s findings, the filing underscores that “transparency for the American public is of the utmost importance to this Administration.” Given the strong public interest, the DOJ informed the court that it is preparing to unseal the underlying grand jury transcripts to shed light on its investigation into the Epstein case.
