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The future of the deputy FBI director, Dan Bongino, is unclear after he stormed out of a meeting with Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and told friends he was considering quitting over the controversy surrounding Jeffrey Epstein.
Bongino, a former New York police officer and Secret Service agent who helped protect George W Bush and Barack Obama, appears on course to be the Trump administration’s first casualty of the Epstein fallout, which is threatening to split the “Make America great again” (Maga) movement
Having failed to appear for work on Friday and reportedly considering his future, it was unclear whether the former rightwing podcaster was at his desk in the bureau’s Washington DC headquarters on Monday.
CNN reported that JD Vance had spent the weekend mediating an increasingly bitter feud involving Bondi, Bognino, Kash Patel, the FBI director – and many others.
It is not the first time Bongino has appeared unhappy in his work. In May he cried during a live appearance on Fox & Friends, lamenting that he “gave up everything” to take the FBI role.
There is currently no word on whether Bognino would follow through on his threat to resign, although insiders suggested his position had become untenable given that Donald Trump had publicly thrown his support behind Bondi and made clear his displeasure over the public squabbling among his supporters over Epstein. The disgraced financier was found dead in his prison cell in 2019 after being arrested on federal charges of sex trafficking minors.
It is the lingering aftermath of this case that has put Bongino – by many measurements, an unlikely and controversial choice to be FBI deputy director – in the spotlight.
As a rightwing podcaster and media personality, Bongino was in the vanguard of pushing conspiracy theories about Epstein, suggesting that he had been murdered, rather than having taken his own life, and that he had a list of powerful clients who feared being unmasked as pedophiles.
Bondi, too, fueled the widespread Maga belief in the existence of a high profile client list when she told Fox News that it was “sitting on my desk right now”. But both were accused of having oversold the story when a Department of Justice (DoJ) memo was published this month concluding that Epstein had indeed committed suicide and the storied client list did not, in fact, exist.
It was against this backdrop that the pair clashed last Wednesday, leaving Bongino “out of control furious” in a meeting also attended by Patel, Susie Wiles, the powerful White House chief of staff, and deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich.
Far before the fallout, critics warned that Bongino was unqualified for the post.
His appointment marked the the first time in the FBI’s 117-year history that the second-in-command position had not been held by one of the bureau’s former agents.
It was also seen as reinforcing fears - already ignited by the prior appointment of Patel - that Trump intended to use the bureau as an instrument of revenge against his enemies.
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“Donald Trump just named far-right MAGA podcaster Dan Bongino, a notorious conspiracy theorist who promoted the lie that the 2020 election was ‘stolen,’ to serve as Deputy Director of the FBI. God help us all,” the Republicans Against Trump group posted on X at the time of his nomination in February..
Bongino, a former Fox News host who has written books about the supposed existence of the anti-Trump “deep state”, famously said in 2018 that “my entire life right now is about owning the libs.”
Despite siding with Bondi, Trump told reporters over the weekendthat Bongino was “a very good guy … He sounded terrific, actually … I think he’s in good shape.”
Bongino has one powerful advocate in Laura Loomer, the far-right social media influencer who is often credited with having Trump’s ear and who broke the news of his unhappiness last week.
“I’m told Kash and Bongino are furious with Blondi and the blowback she has caused them with her lack of transparency,” she posted. “Kash Patel and Dan Bongino should call for Blondi’s public resignation today to save themselves and to also push for full transparency into the Epstein files. Someone needs to be fired for this. Giving Blondi courtesy to resign is more than she deserves.”
