FBI agents stunned by appointment of right-wing podcaster to No. 2 position

WASHINGTON – In a memo on Feb 23 evening, the FBI Agents Association told its 14,000 members that new director Kash Patel had assured them that he would follow tradition and name a career special agent with operational expertise as his deputy director.

“Director Patel agreed,” said the memo, which Reuters reviewed.

An hour after the memo was sent, Mr Dan Bongino, a right-wing podcaster who has never been an FBI agent and who has called the agency “irredeemably corrupt”, was named as Mr Patel’s deputy director. That position oversees day-to-day operations and carries enormous power to supervise investigations across the nation.

The unprecedented appointment of two loyalists to US President Donald Trump has rattled the FBI community and lawyers who worry that their lack of experience and overt statements supporting retribution for the President’s critics could presage a misuse of the nation’s most prominent investigative agency, according to 14 former FBI employees and prosecutors interviewed by Reuters.

“FBI agents’ oaths to support and defend the Constitution will be tested as never before,” said Mr David Laufman, who worked with FBI agents on sensitive investigations for decades, including as chief of counterintelligence for the Justice Department. 

Mr Laufman said the appointments of Mr Patel and Mr Bongino “raise alarming questions about whether the FBI will wholly adhere to the rule of law, or instead will become a political investigative tool of the White House”.

Several recently retired career senior FBI officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they fear retribution, said Mr Bongino’s appointment is especially troublesome. 

“The deputy director wields incredible power to open investigations and that’s why this position shouldn’t be held – hasn’t really ever been held – by a political appointee,” a former senior FBI executive said. Another former FBI official, who held senior leadership positions in Mr Trump's first term and during Mr Joe Biden's presidency, described Mr Bongino’s appointment as a “slap in the face, bold and brazen".

The FBI declined to comment. Mr Bongino did not respond to a request for comment. Justice Department officials also did not respond.

Over the FBI’s 117-year history, the deputy director has traditionally been a career role filled by an agent who has risen through the ranks. The No. 2 spot manages daily operations for an agency with more than 37,000 employees, including a dozen senior officials in Washington and leaders at 55 field offices. 

“I am confident Dan will bring vigor and enthusiasm to the deputy director role, driving the operations of this organisation in the right direction,” Mr Patel wrote in a message to FBI employees on Feb 25. Mr Trump called Mr Bongino “a man of incredible love and passion for our country”.

Mr Bongino, 50, does have some law enforcement experience. He served as a New York City police officer from 1995 to 1999, when he joined the US Secret Service. He left it in 2011 and later unsuccessfully ran for US Senate in Maryland and for Congress in Florida. He was a long-time Fox News commentator and his podcast was the seventh most popular in the US in January, according to Podtrac, a podcast analytics firm.

‘Irredeemably corrupt’

Like Mr Patel, Mr Bongino has long raised unfounded conspiracy theories and accused the FBI of being politicised. He has criticised the bureau for investigating the Jan 6, 2021, rioters and for searching Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in August 2022, a court-approved action in which highly classified documents were seized in an unsecured area, including a bathroom. 

After the search, Mr Bongino said on his podcast: “Folks, the FBI is lost. It’s broken, irredeemably corrupt at this point.” A short while later, he said on Fox News that “every person involved in this has to be fired immediately” and “there is no fixing this, only rebuilding it”.

On his podcast Feb 24, Mr Bongino called the appointment “the honour of a lifetime” and said he would work to “re-establish faith in the institution”. He added that he would begin the transition from “political commentator Dan to deputy director of the FBI Dan. Those are different roles, require different skills”.

“The good people there, doing their job, hitting the streets, developing sources – we'll have your back,” he said.

‘Uncertainty and fear’

Mr Bongino’s statements did little to ease anxiety from former agents who are in direct contact with current agents, not only for their jobs but for what it might mean for the bureau.

“I’ve been talking to lots of agents – not only retired but active – and all have the same feelings of uncertainty and fear” about the possibility of politicisation, said Ms Jerri Williams, a retired agent who hosts a popular podcast about historic FBI cases. “Agents are really scared.”

Another retired agent said there is already fear about speaking up in the new regime. “There’s a perception that you better be careful what you say.”

Even before Mr Bongino's appointment, the FBI had been shaken. On Jan 31, acting Deputy Attorney-General Emil Bove dismissed six senior FBI executives, veterans who supervised matters from counterintelligence to cybercrime, as well as three other senior officials in Washington and Miami, according to a copy of the memo seen by Reuters and two people familiar with the matter. 

In the memo, Mr Bove said all were being removed for the alleged “weaponisation” of the Justice Department against Mr Trump and his allies. Support staff for key leaders were also reassigned, leaving a vacuum of leadership and institutional knowledge at the FBI’s highest levels, people familiar with the matter said.

Efforts to reform the FBI are not unusual. In the 1970s, a US Senate investigation exposed illegal domestic FBI spying and led to reforms. In the 1990s, former director Louis Freeh moved hundreds of agents from Washington into the field. After the September 2001 attacks, then FBI director Robert Mueller made terrorism and intelligence top priorities, dramatically reshaping the bureau.  

Historically, almost all FBI directors have been conservatives, including Mr Freeh, who was appointed by a Democrat, and Mr Chris Wray, whom Mr Trump appointed during his first term, but who resigned before his second term. Mr Trump fired Mr Wray's predecessor, Mr James Comey, in 2017 during his first term in office.

That makes Mr Patel the bureau's third director in less than eight years, a rapid pace of change in a position meant to serve a 10-year term – a length intended to insulate them from politics.

Mr Patel has already taken some steps towards fulfilling his pledge to reform the FBI. On his first day, he announced he intended to relocate some 1,500 employees out to field offices and an FBI office at an army outpost in Alabama.

Three former senior FBI officials said Mr Patel's and Mr Bongino's public statements that the bureau should increase its focus on violent crime have alarmed many agents because they believe it will leave other important crimes unsolved.

“What’s going to happen to white-collar investigations? What’s going to happen to bank fraud investigations? How about counterintelligence?” said one former senior FBI executive. “Are we getting out of this business? Because that would be an extreme detriment to the country.”

Already in the last few weeks, some evidence has emerged to suggest that the Justice Department is pursuing politically motivated case decisions. Eight prosecutors resigned in Washington and New York after Mr Bove pressured them to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. 

In Washington, the US Attorney’s Office’s criminal chief resigned after she said that she and the FBI were wrongly pressured to order a bank to freeze the assets from a grant awarded by the Environmental Protection Agency during the Biden administration, despite what she said was a lack of evidence that any crime was committed. 

Mr James Davidson, a former agent who heads the non-partisan FBI Integrity Project, a non-profit that advocates for safeguards against the bureau misusing its power, said Mr Bongino’s appointment was especially worrisome because it comes on the heels of Mr Trump replacing the nation's top military officials with loyalists.  

“Trump has now positioned himself so that he will control both the military and the FBI,” he said. “One can only speculate what that might mean four years from now.” REUTERS