US President Donald Trump has appointed podcaster and commentator Dan Bongino as deputy director of the FBI.
Trump posted on social media that Bongino was “a man of incredible love and passion for our Country” and would serve under newly confirmed FBI Director Kash Patel.
Bongino, 50, who has worked for the New York police department and the Secret Service, is a staunch Trump ally who has pushed false claims about the 2020 election.
His appointment, which does not require Senate confirmation, means neither of the top two people running the agency has FBI experience.
“Thank you Mr President,” Bongino wrote on social media on Sunday night.
The deputy director, who is responsible for supervising all domestic and international operations, is usually a career agent with years of experience.
Bongino hosts daily podcast The Dan Bongino Show, whose Facebook posts often attract more attention than those of Fox News and CNN combined.
In Friday’s episode there was a segment about the FBI, in which he praised Patel and tried to allay Democratic fears the agency will be used to target Trump’s enemies.
“Kash Patel is there for one reason, he is there to make the FBI great again,” he said.
He’s committed to fighting crime and only that, he added, calling his new boss the “change agent” the FBI needs.
“How amazing would it be in four years to look back with a good, high-quality, reformed FBI free of woke culture and DEI that goes out making headline, big arrests of real bad guys destroying your community. How good would that be?”
Bongino’s appointment comes with FBI in flux after the justice department forced out some of its top officials and demanded the names of agents who investigated the 2021 riot by Trump supporters at the US Capitol.
Critics have said that threatened the FBI’s political independence.
Bongino and PateI are both seen as Trump loyalists. Bongino, on Monday on his daily radio show, addressed concerns about political partisanship in his content.
“We play different roles in our life, and each one requires a different skill set,” he said.
He later added: “We are going to re-establish faith in this institution. The FBI belongs to the American people.”
Bongino, who has run for Congress three times, hosted Trump on his podcast ahead of last year’s election.
Episodes of his programme from the last week include titles such as “Trump Keeps Delivering And The Libs Are Seething” and “The Only People Who Love Crime Are Criminals!!!”
He has repeated Trump’s false claim that he won the 2020 election and advanced another conspiracy that Joe Biden’s administration was behind the FBI search for classified documents at Trump’s Florida home.
“EVERYONE involved in this DOJ/FBI abomination, from the management down to the agents, must be immediately terminated when the tyrants are thrown out of office,” he said on X.
In 2018, when talking about his career as a prolific conservative political commentator, Bongino said: “My life is all about owning the libs now.”
With a combative persona, he can often be found firing back at Trump’s detractors on X, including a long-running spat with horror author Stephen King.
In his social media announcement on Sunday, Trump said that Bongino would give up the podcast in order to serve in the FBI role.
Patel was last week narrowly confirmed by the Senate to the lead the law-enforcement agency that he has long attacked.
He denied any plans to pursue political vendettas and has promised to “rebuild” the bureau.
The FBI has 38,000 employees and a budget of more than $11bn.
