Dan Bongino, who called FBI corrupt, is now Kash Patel’s deputy. Who is the far-right podcaster?

US President Donald Trump has named podcaster and commentator Dan Bongino as the deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Bongino will work under Kash Patel, who has been appointed the director of the federal law enforcement agency.

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Trump stated that Bongino was chosen for the role by Patel . The position does not require Senate approval.

The deputy director is the FBI’s second-highest official and is typically a career agent overseeing the bureau’s daily law enforcement operations.

But who is Bongino? What has he previously said about the FBI? What are his plans for the agency?

We will answer these questions:

Who is Dan Bongino: Explained in 10 points

1. The 50-year-old has served in the New York Police Department and the U.S. Secret Service. A strong supporter of Trump , he has promoted false claims regarding the 2020 election.

2. Bongino spent several years in the 1990s as an officer with the New York Police Department before moving to the Secret Service.

3. He began doing commentary on Fox News over a decade ago and hosted a Saturday night programme on the network from 2021 to 2023.

4. He currently hosts ‘The Dan Bongino Show’, one of the most popular podcasts on Spotify. According to BBC, the programme draws more listeners than those of Fox News and CNN combined.

5. Bongino was part of the presidential security details for former US presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush before rising to prominence as a right-wing media figure. He became a key voice in the Make America Great Again movement and made claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. These claims, supported by Trump and his allies, have been widely debunked by courts and former Trump Attorney General William Barr.

6. After Rush Limbaugh’s death in 2021, he was selected to host a radio show in the same time slot as the well-known conservative commentator.

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7. Bongino contested a US Senate seat in Maryland in 2012, followed by congressional races in Maryland and Florida in 2014 and 2016 after relocating in 2015. He lost all three elections.

8. In an interview last autumn, Bongino urged Trump to commit to forming a commission to reform the Secret Service, calling it a “failed” agency and criticising it over two assassination attempts last year. Referring to a suspect who allegedly camped outside Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, before being seen with a rifle, Bongino said, “That guy should have been nowhere near you.” During the same discussion, Trump praised the Secret Service agent who spotted the rifle’s barrel emerging from a bush.

9. Trump announced Bongino’s appointment on Sunday night in a post on his Truth Social platform, describing him as “a man of incredible love and passion for our Country.” He called the decision “great news for Law Enforcement and American Justice.”

10. A review of Bongino’s podcast commentary over the past year indicates his loyalty to Patel and his support for major reforms. He has called for removing individuals he considers overly political from the bureau and shifting the agency’s investigative focus away from domestic extremism.

What Dan Bongino has said about Kash Patel and the FBI

Even before Trump selected Patel as FBI director , Bongino was a strong supporter, frequently backing him on his podcast.

He argued that Patel was the only person capable of “going in there and cleaning that mess up.”

“Kash knows where the bodies are buried,” Bongino told listeners in November.

“And he’s got shovels, man. He’s ready to rock and roll. That’s why they’re so terrified.”

Like Patel, Bongino has called for exposing what he sees as the FBI’s political weaponisation and relocating agents from Washington, DC, to focus on crime in other parts of the country.

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In January, he encouraged his millions of listeners, whom he refers to as his “Bongino Army”, to contact their senators in support of Patel’s appointment .

Bongino has been vocal in his criticism of former FBI leadership. He described Patel’s predecessor, Christopher Wray, as “incompetent,” “awful,” and “potentially corrupt.”

In 2023, Bongino intensified his criticism of the FBI, describing the agency as a “clear and present danger” to the United States. He accused it of widespread corruption, claiming it had conspired with foreign governments, spread disinformation, suppressed information about Hunter Biden, and interfered in elections.

He called former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, who played a key role in the Trump-Russia investigation, an “absolute buffoon.” Andrew Weissmann, the former FBI general counsel who worked on Robert Mueller’s special counsel team, was labelled an “absolute tool bag.”

The podcaster has not hesitated to attack previous FBI leaders, often using harsh language. He believes they compromised the agency’s integrity by unfairly targeting conservatives.

Bongino has also criticised the current FBI staff. Earlier this month, after Trump’s border czar Tom Homan accused the FBI of leaking details about planned immigration raids, Bongino called the alleged leakers “stupid” and said they would be caught and imprisoned.

With an aggressive online presence, he frequently clashes with Trump’s critics on X, including an ongoing feud with horror author Stephen King.

In a post on Sunday, Trump announced that Bongino would step away from his podcast to take up his new role at the FBI.

What are his plans for the FBI?

One of Bongino’s main priorities is removing agents who were 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 said on his podcast earlier this month.

He has also argued that the FBI has focused too heavily on domestic intelligence gathering, which, in his view, has come at the expense of tackling serious criminals and international threats. He has criticised federal law enforcement for what he sees as wasted efforts investigating January 6 rioters and anti-abortion activists.

Bongino often expresses distrust toward the FBI, claiming the agency has lost its credibility. However, his push for reforms may have a personal connection. In March, he said that 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?”

The FBI currently has 38,000 employees and an annual budget exceeding $11 billion.

‘God help us all’

Since Bongino was announced as the next deputy director, some have suggested growing concerns over the agency’s future direction.

Fears, which were already high following Kash Patel’s confirmation, have grown over the possibility that the administration could use the bureau to target its political opponents.

“Donald Trump just named far-right MAGA podcaster Dan Bongino, a notorious conspiracy theorist who promoted the lie that the 2020 election was ‘stolen,’ to serve as Deputy Director of the FBI. God help us all,” posted the X account Republicans Against Trump.

Gregg Nunziata, a Republican and former general counsel to Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, warned that Bongino’s appointment was even more extreme than Patel’s.

“Kash Patel should have been a redline. Bongino is what you get when [Republican] Senators fail to do their jobs and say no to Patel,” Nunziata wrote.

With inputs from agencies