Donald Trump campaigned on remaking the nation’s law enforcement agencies. But his appointment of right-wing podcaster Dan Bongino as the FBI’s Deputy Director laid bare just how drastic he intends that transformation to be.
Bongino, a former New York City police officer and Secret Service agent, is far from a conventional choice. He has never served in the FBI, nor has he managed an operation of its size and scope. His primary professional experience over the last decade has been picking fights and shaping narratives as a pugnacious media personality. “My entire life right now is about owning the libs,” Bongino said in 2018. “That’s it.”
In other words: Gone are the days when the bureau’s second in command is a modest D.C. bureaucrat known to hardly anyone outside the Belway. In Trump’s Washington, that title belongs to a different kind of creature: the ferociously loyal, hard-right, pro-Trump influencer.
“It’s totally congruent with other choices in this administration,” says a Trump adviser. “You’re looking for telegenic people who can present a case well on camera. When you’ve got somebody who has that natural set of skills and an ideological perspective that aligns with the administration, that’s kind of the secret sauce.”
Trump announced Bongino’s new job three days after the Senate confirmed Kash Patel, another conservative firebrand, to become the new FBI Director. For the MAGA movement, the elevation of another Trump loyalist to help lead the nation’s premier law enforcement agency represents a thrilling vision coming to view. “It shows that President Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel are very serious about bringing reforms to the Justice Department and particularly the FBI,” says Mike Davis, a Trump ally who founded the conservative Article III Project. “It’s Christmas every day with the Trump 47 administration.”
For others, Bongino’s ascension is a source of profound anxiety. Given his rhetoric and Trump’s vindictive streak, they fear that Bongino’s pugilism will translate into miscarriages of justice. “If you have people whose goal is not actually to investigate crimes based on the standards that are set forth for investigations, but rather to use the tools of law enforcement to go after people, they can do that,” says a former FBI official who requested anonymity to avoid possible retaliation. There is also little that detractors can do to stop Bongino’s appointment; the role does not require Senate confirmation.
The FBI Deputy Director, tasked with supervising all of the bureau’s domestic and international operations, is usually a career agent with years of experience. The position, venerated inside the department, was once held by Mark Felt, who in 2005 revealed himself to be “Deep Throat,” the confidential source who helped Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein expose the Watergate scandal.
Even before installing new leadership, Trump had already imposed his will on the agency and its investigators. Over the last month, the Justice Department has pushed out a number of senior officials and has asked for the names of FBI personnel who investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The agency’s interim leaders, Brian Driscoll and Robert Kissane, refused to accede to those demands. But now that Patel and Bongino are in, many suspect that Driscoll and Kissane are on the way out, and the new regime will take command inside the Hoover Building. Already, there have been changes. As Patel was preparing to take the oath of office on Friday, FBI leadership announced a plan to transfer up to 1,500 staff and agents out of the bureau’s Washington headquarters to field offices across the country.
Bongino’s path to the upper echelons of the FBI is unlike anything the country has ever seen. He previously ran for Congress three times but never won, eventually turning his campaigns into the springboard to become a powerful right-wing media figure. After moving to Florida in 2015, he launched a podcast from his basement and quickly garnered a massive audience. In the years that followed, he rose to more prominence as a frequent commentator on Fox News. Soon, he was a mainstay of the online right. In October 2020, his Facebook posts were among the most shared on the platform, according to CrowdTangle, an analytics software tool.
Bongino has been faithful to Trump through it all, including during his darkest period. As a weekend Fox News host in 2021, Bogino brought Trump on the program at a time when the network was trying to diminish the exiled President. As part of a trove of documents released in a lawsuit alleging Fox knowingly spread misinformation about the Dominion voting system, it was revealed that the network’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, was seeking to marginalize Trump. “Fox News very busy pivoting,” he emailed a former Fox executive on January 8, 2021. “We want to make Trump a nonperson.”
Bongino left Fox News in April 2023, shifting his focus predominantly to his podcast, one of the most popular in the country, according to Spotify. In a sign of his place within the American right’s influence hierarchy, he was given the same radio time slot as Rush Limbaugh. Armed with that platform, Bongino castigated Covid-19 mandates, pushed unsubstantiated claims that Democrats stole the 2020 election, and promoted the America First creed. “Keep in mind,” says the Trump adviser, “this guy’s been advocating for the President to an audience of millions for the better part of last seven or eight years.”
After winning the 2024 election, Trump wanted to find a role for him inside the government; he had floated Bongino for Secret Service Director, according to a source familiar with the President’s thinking. Eventually, he settled on placing him inside the FBI alongside Patel.
To the MAGA faithful, the two represent a chance to reshape U.S. law enforcement. “FBI agents work for the President and his political appointees, not the other way around,” says Davis. To critics, who cite the bureau’s tradition of independence, that is precisely the concern. “Is it possible that these men are going to suddenly transform into objective and impartial supervisors of investigators?” says the former FBI agent. “It’s possible, but it seems unlikely, given the trajectory so far.”
But there is at least one thing that Trump’s champions and critics will have in common: They will all be watching closely to see how Patel and Bongino wield the enormous power the President has handed them.
