The second most powerful official at the FBI will be a right-wing podcaster who used to regularly appear on Infowars.
Describing him as a “man of incredible love and passion for our Country,” President Donald Trump on Sunday announced that Dan Bongino would serve as deputy director of the FBI. The announcement came days after the Senate confirmed Trump loyalist Kash Patel as the bureau’s director, heightening concerns that federal law enforcement will be used to target Trump’s political opposition.
Bongino is a former Secret Service agent with no prior experience running a law enforcement agency. As deputy director, he will oversee the FBI’s investigations and intelligence-gathering activities; according to the Wall Street Journal, he will be the first to hold the position without having previously worked for the bureau, despite Patel reportedly promising staff that his second in command would be an FBI special agent.
A former contributor at Fox News — and three-time failed Republican congressional candidate — Bongino has hosted his own conservative web show for Rumble, a right-wing alternative to YouTube (from which he was banned), and NRATV. Earlier this month, he used his own platform to argue for executive-branch lawlessness, saying that Trump “should ignore” a court order blocking his blanket freeze on federal spending, as noted by Media Matters, a liberal watchdog group.
Bongino was also previously a regular guest on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars platform, where he railed against Democrats and the “danger in electing far leftists who have little government experience.”
“This just continues to be amazing,” Jones said Sunday, praising Bongino as a fighter in “our movement to take our country back from the globalists,” a response promoted by Russian state media. “What a dream team Trump is assembling.”
But Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., argued that the appointment of a right-wing “internet troll” was troubling evidence of democratic backsliding.
“Trump installs another loyalist who won’t say no to any immoral or unethical act,” Schiff wrote on social media. “And our law enforcement agencies — and the public safety — are further degraded.”
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