Bongino announces he is leaving FBI deputy director job in January

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino announced Wednesday that in January he will leave the powerful job in which he helped oversee a tumultuous period at the bureau with major shifts of resources and dramatic dismissals of experienced agents.

President Donald Trump commended Bongino on his tenure and suggested that he would be returning to his job as a conservative podcaster.

“Dan did a great job. I think he wants to go back to his show,” Trump told reporters Wednesday afternoon.

Bongino — the second most powerful person in the FBI — had left Washington for the year more than a week ago and said he would not be returning to the agency’s headquarters, according to the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel issue they were not authorized to talk about publicly. He had previously told colleagues that his last official day at the bureau will be in January, according to two people familiar with the matter.

“I want to thank President Trump, [Attorney General Pam Bondi] and [FBI Director Kash Patel] for the opportunity to serve with purpose,” Bongino wrote in a social media post announcing his departure. “Most importantly, I want to thank you, my fellow Americans, for the privilege to serve you. God bless America, and all those who defend Her.”

The departure after less than a year would mark the end of a tumultuous tenure for Bongino, who left a lucrative job as a podcaster to serve as second-in-command at the FBI when Trump became president. Bongino serves under FBI Director Kash Patel.

Patel and Bongino have shifted FBI resources to immigration enforcement, sinking morale at an agency that typically attracts law enforcement officials who are trained to work on more complex investigations. They have also pushed out seasoned veterans within the bureau with years of experience in national security and public corruption probes.

Multiple people familiar with his thinking said he has been unhappy at the FBI and has threatened to leave multiple times.

Three months into his job, Bongino expressed frustration with the demands of the deputy director position during a Fox News appearance.

“I gave up everything for this. My wife is struggling,” he said in the May interview. He continued, “I stare at these four walls all day in D.C., by myself, divorced from my wife — not divorced — but, I mean, separated, and it’s hard.”

When Trump named Bongino deputy director, the president transformed what was long a powerful career position that oversaw the day-to-day operations of the bureau into a political job with a more public presence.

Bongino, a Trump loyalist who had previously worked at the Secret Service, built his reputation within right-wing circles during the Biden administration. He did so in part by spreading conspiracy theories about the FBI and its workforce and criticizing law enforcement as politicized.

After Bongino began his job at the FBI and couldn’t prove the baseless theories he spread on his podcast, many of his right-wing supporters turned on him.

Bongino and Patel — also a conservative media personality — used their platforms, for example, to spread inaccuracies about the high-profile sex-trafficking investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, accusing the Biden administration without evidence of covering up key details of the case.

When the Justice Department declared during the summer that there was no rumored “client list” tied to Epstein and that the law enforcement agency would not be releasing any more investigatory files, many people directed their ire at Bongino and Patel and accused the Trump administration of lying to the American people.

At the time, Bongino tried to distance himself from the White House response.

In August, the Trump administration named then-Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey as the FBI’s co-deputy director, installing the Republican firebrand to serve alongside Bongino. Bailey was considered for a top Justice Department position at the beginning of the administration, but the president opted not to nominate him.

Since joining the bureau, Bailey has assumed a more behind-the scenes role than Bongino. Bailey is expected to remain in his slot as deputy director.

Patel and Bongino have pushed out senior FBI officials across the country, often with no stated reason or in response to far-right critics online who have called for the agents’ removals because of cases they may have been involved in. That has prompted multiple lawsuits against the FBI.

The lawsuits have portrayed Bongino and Patel as more concerned with their reputations online than with learning how the FBI operates.