Dan Bongino’s yearslong history of FBI criticism and conspiracy theories

The deputy director is second-in-command of the FBI, and the job has traditionally been filled by a career agent who manages daily operations across the bureau’s 55 field offices. The job, like other comparable posts, does not require approval from the Senate.

But neither Bongino nor FBI Director Kash Patel have ever served in the agency they will now lead, and their public criticism of the FBI and embrace of misinformation and partisanship is raising questions about how they will run the FBI, even as they insist they are going to wipe the agency clean of politics. 

On Bongino’s podcast from May 2017 through Monday, there were more than 21,000 mentions of “FBI” or “deep state,” according to data from the KnowledgeFight podcast database. Mentions peaked in June 2023, the month Trump was indicted for obstruction and other crimes after federal officials accused him of hoarding classified documents. The case was dismissed after Trump won the 2024 election. 

Bongino wasn’t always critical of the bureau; in episodes from early 2017 and before, he maintained a fairly deferential tone. But in the later months of that year, things shifted. 

He started discussing conspiracy theories that the Obama administration had illegally spied on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign with the FBI, despite a lack of evidence.  

And by the end of Trump’s first year in office, Bongino had come to a revelation, he said, claiming in a Dec. 14, 2017 episode that he believed that FBI leadership had interfered in the U.S. election by collecting information about Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign in an attempt to rig the election for Democrat Hillary Clinton. At the time, the FBI was, in fact, heavily criticized for releasing information about Clinton’s use of a private email server for official public communications. 

He’s also been one of the loudest supporters of unfounded claims that the 2020 election was stolen, railing often about what he said was a coordinated effort from Democratic politicians and groups to manipulate social media, voting laws, poll workers and vote-by-mail to throw the election to Democrat Joe Biden. 

Biden won in 2020; there was no widespread voter fraud, according to members of Trump’s own administration. But Bongino warned that without addressing these alleged injustices, the same “cabal” would interfere in the 2024 election.

Bongino’s criticism of the FBI initially focused on top officials who he claimed were partisan. But after the FBI obtained a search warrant to recover classified documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, Bongino called for larger-scale firings at the agency: “Every person involved in this has to be fired immediately,” he said in an August 2022 Fox & Friends interview. “And then when the left starts whining in the media, fire 100 more the next day. Do not even let them breathe, everyone has to go, you do not even live in a constitutional republic anymore, and there is no fixing this, there is only rebuilding it.” 

“I’ll say for the 10th or 20th time this week, this is why the FBI must be disbanded,” Bongino said on a September 2022 episode. “You understand this is going to get worse, you’re not going to fix this. The organization needs to be disbanded.”

Bongino escalated his attacks on the FBI in 2023, characterizing the agency as a “clear and present danger” to the United States. Bongino accused the FBI of systemic corruption, alleging that it colluded with foreign governments, spread disinformation, suppressed information related to Biden’s son Hunter Biden and interfered in elections. 

He frequently targeted then-FBI Director Christopher Wray, calling his leadership an embarrassment and suggesting that the agency had become a tool for political oppression. Bongino also claimed that the FBI actively suppressed information about COVID-19, violated the First Amendment and targeted Donald Trump and conservatives.

Bongino continued to make the call to disband the FBI through 2024.

It’s not entirely clear how Bongino entered the running for the deputy director position.

He does have law enforcement experience, having served in the U.S. Secret Service, on details for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He was also in the New York Police Department.

Since then, he’s been in Trump’s orbit as a conservative commentator. He worked on Fox News from 2021 through 2023, and was chosen to host a radio show in the same time slot as Rush Limbaugh after his 2021 death.

Bongino will be one of nearly two-dozen former Fox News personalities in Trump’s administration, a list that includes Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Trump similarly staffed his first administration with several of the network’s employees.

In July, conservative-leaning publication The Daily Signal published a YouTube interview with Bongino in which he said he would be open to leading the FBI “if President Trump called.”

In November 2024, shortly after Trump’s election, Bongino began lobbying on Patel’s behalf to his listeners, urging them to share positive endorsements for Patel’s FBI director nomination on social media.

“Folks, we need Kash Patel at FBI. As far as I’m concerned right now, he is the only guy who knows where the bodies are buried and go in there and clean that mess up, we got to get Kash,” Bongino said in a Nov. 19 episode of his podcast. Since the election, he has brought up Patel in at least 40 separate episodes.

To take the position at the FBI, Bongino has to give up his microphone. Trump said in his announcement that Bongino was “willing and prepared.”

“Great news for Law Enforcement and American Justice!” Trump said in a social media post announcing the appointment.