Who is Dan Bongino, FBI’s new deputy director?

Conservative commentator, popular podcaster, ex-secret service agent Dan Bongino has always had a lot to say about the bureau.

The popular right-wing podcaster Dan Bongino has built a career on delivering sometimes inflammatory critiques of the media, Democrats, and the federal government.

Now, the 50-year-old former New York police officer and U.S. Secret Service agent is set to return to the government he has frequently criticized, as President Donald Trump’s pick for deputy FBI director. Bongino announced Monday that he will soon leave his daily show to assume the new role.

Bongino, who will serve under FBI Director Kash Patel, lacks prior experience at the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency. However, he has been outspoken about how he believes it should be reformed.

A review of Bongino’s podcast commentary over the past year highlights his loyalty to Patel and his desire for significant changes within the bureau. His stated priorities include purging the FBI of individuals he considers politically biased and shifting investigative focus away from domestic extremism.

Here’s a closer look at Bongino’s views on the FBI, in his own words:

Kash Patel is the only possible FBI leader

Even before Trump nominated Patel for FBI director, Bongino was one of his most vocal supporters, asserting on his podcast that Patel was the only candidate capable of "going in there and cleaning that mess up."

“Kash knows where the bodies are buried,” Bongino told his listeners last November. “And he’s got shovels, man. He’s ready to rock and roll. That’s why they’re so terrified.”

Like Patel, Bongino believes the FBI must expose political weaponization within the agency and relocate agents from Washington, D.C., to focus on criminal investigations across the country.

In January, Bongino urged his millions of listeners—whom he calls his “Bongino Army”—to pressure their senators to confirm Patel.

“We don’t get this guy in at the FBI, you’re never going to get any answers at all,” the podcaster said.

Criticism of FBI employees

Bongino has not held back in his criticism of past FBI leadership. He has described Patel’s predecessor, Christopher Wray, as “incompetent,” “awful,” and “potentially corrupt.” Andrew McCabe, the former acting FBI director involved in the Trump-Russia investigation, is, in his words, an “absolute buffoon.” Meanwhile, former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann, who worked on special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, is an “absolute tool bag.”

The podcaster frequently criticizes former FBI officials, often in blunt and crude terms, arguing that they compromised the agency’s integrity to unfairly target conservatives.

Bongino has also directed harsh criticism at current FBI personnel. Earlier this month, after Trump’s border czar Tom Homan accused the FBI of leaking information about planned immigration raids, Bongino called the alleged leakers “stupid” and predicted they would be caught and imprisoned.

Reflecting on his time as a Secret Service agent under President Barack Obama, Bongino recalled his frustration listening to speeches advocating big government. “Do you know how hard it was for me in my last line of work, how hard it was for me to listen to these stupid Obama speeches about big government?” he said. “But I always took my job as serious as a freaking stroke. Because I swore to do a job, not to be a politician.”

He’s ready for sweeping changes

Bongino has expressed urgency in pushing for FBI reforms, emphasizing that the Republican control of government may be short-lived. In December, he stated that changes must happen quickly, ideally within the next two years.

Among his proposed reforms, Bongino has called for the firing of agents involved in investigations into Trump. “If you swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States as an FBI agent and engaged in a tyrannical investigation against Donald Trump with partisan intent and not the Constitution in mind, you do not deserve your job,” he declared on his podcast earlier this month.

The Justice Department has already requested a list from the FBI of the thousands of agents who participated in investigations into the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot—a move some within the bureau fear could lead to mass firings.

Bongino has also criticized the FBI for focusing too much on domestic intelligence-gathering while neglecting serious criminals and international threats. He has suggested that federal law enforcement has wasted resources investigating January 6 rioters and anti-abortion activists.

“These are threats to the United States?” he questioned in a December podcast. “Grandma is in the gulag for a trespassing charge on January 6th.”

Additionally, he has condemned the Department of Justice and former Attorney General Merrick Garland for directing the FBI to address harassment and threats against school boards and educators.

“We are going to make the FBI great again,” Bongino asserted on his podcast earlier this month. “Because if we don’t have an FBI breaking up counterterror plots trying to kill us, and they’re worried about Moms for Liberty and pro-lifers, then we’ve got a problem, folks.”

Motivated by a personal connection

Bongino frequently laments how he doesn’t feel he can trust the FBI and says the agency has lost its credibility.

“Whatever the FBI says these days, I tend to believe the opposite,” he said in January after Wray said in an interview that the agency wasn’t tracking any specific or credible threats to Trump’s inauguration.

But the new deputy director’s interest in reforming the FBI may hold more personal significance than some realize. In March, Bongino said an FBI representative used to visit his high school when he was a teenager.

“All I wanted to be, was an FBI agent. That is it, man. I, like, adored these guys, man,” he said. “What happened to this agency?”

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