Wired

02/24/2025

Dan Bongino has spent the last decade building a career in right-wing media based on his sycophantic support of President Donald Trump and his willingness to engage in endless conspiracy theories about everything from Covid-19 and the 2020 elections to the FBI, which he has said should no longer exist in its current form.

“The FBI is no longer a law enforcement entity,” Bongino wrote on X in 2023. “It is an oppo research firm for Democrats with an armed political enforcement branch.” He also wrote previously that he wants to “disband the FBI” and boosted conspiracy theories about its role in the Capitol insurrection. “I don’t trust these people at all,” Bongino wrote under a Facebook video about the agency last year.

“There is a ton of concern that someone with no experience in the Bureau is appointed to, in the view of agents, a position that is even more important than the director,” one member of the association told WIRED. The person was granted anonymity over fears of recrimination from the new FBI leadership.

Bongino is a Trump loyalist who has in the past referred to the president as “an apex predator.” A three-time failed congressional candidate, he has risen from the fringes of the online conspiracy community to become one of the most prominent voices in right-wing media, leveraging online platforms, as well as appearances on Fox News, to push wild conspiracy theories about the agency he will now help to oversee and about the government generally. (He has written a book called Follow the Money: The Shocking Deep State Connections of the Anti-Trump Cabal.) A claimed proponent of free speech, Bongino is prone to rants and tirades against anyone who criticizes him, and he regularly blocks his critics on social media.

“Dan Bongino is a Trump sycophant whose focus has been delegitimizing any and all legal steps taken against the president and his allies,” Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at media watchdog Media Matters who has tracked Bongino’s career closely, tells WIRED. “Bongino’s appointment hammers home that Trump is building a federal law enforcement team that will carry out his desires to punish his political enemies: You don’t select a bomb-throwing podcaster who has declared that ‘owning the libs’ is his sole focus in life to help run the FBI if you’re aiming for an impartial bureau.”