Bongino Quits Fbi
FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino (Good Dan in Italian) has told colleagues he plans to step down at the end of the year, according to MS NOW and major news outlets. He’s reportedly not returning to work. Perhaps not enough good days in his job.
In February 2025, FBI Director Kash Patel selected him to serve as second in command. The former police officer and Secret Service Agent, turned conservative radio pundit and conspiracy theorist, at times appeared unprepared for the position. Indeed, that seemed the case when Andrew Bailey, Missouri’s former Attorney General, was appointed as the Second or Co-Deputy Director in August 2025 to share leadership and daily operations alongside Bongino.
Few members of the public understand the pressures of his job. The FBI’s over 37,000 employees, including 10,000 Special Agents and 20,000 support personnel, are deployed in 56 field offices around the U.S., and in over 350 “resident agencies” with fewer employees, and in over 20 U.S. Embassies overseas. The FBI’s jurisdiction is vast – from violent crimes to bank robbery, national security and counter-terrorism to cybercrime and organized crime to civil rights violations, comprising over 250 types of investigations. Unlike Bongino’s police duties and Secret Service protection details, the Bureau responds to major and minor investigations alike. And all of it is overseen on the 7th floor of the J. Edgar Hoover building in Washington.
The Trump administration has dramatically reduced the Bureau’s budget by hundreds of millions of dollars and, from January 2025 on, has fired or pushed out many senior executives and Special Agents whom the administration considered incompatible with Trump’s priorities. Trump pardoned all the January 6th rioters, even those who assaulted law enforcement. The number of subjects investigated, as part of the investigation into January 6, was the largest in history, and most of the thousand or so convicted pleaded guilty. You can imagine the morale when years of work against the attackers on our Capitol were tossed aside. You can also imagine the potential challenge of working under Kash Patel, whose prior experience left him less prepared for the Director’s job than Bongino’s did for the Deputy Director’s job. And of course, White House directives have pushed both Patel and Bongino to make uncomfortable changes in the FBI’s operations and strategies.
Bongino has overseen the administration’s diversion of thousands of Agents from their normal assignments to immigration enforcement and preventing violent crime on the streets. While the news media were consumed by the Epstein scandal, thousands of FBI man-hours were spent re-reviewing the Epstein files for public release.
Bongino’s prior radio claims about several FBI cases must have plagued him as he saw the Bureau’s actual work product. During a recent Sean Hannity interview, Bongino admitted that he said things without evidence while he was paid for his political commentary and opinions. His past comments (like calling January 6th an “inside job”) were based on pay, not facts. Such comments did not enhance his credibility.
The FBI Deputy Director runs the agency on a daily basis, and his responsibilities include personnel, discipline, budget, inspections, resources, etc. It is a monumental paperwork task, with all documents headed to the Director’s 7th-floor offices for review and approval. Essentially, every major Bureau decision has gone through Bongino’s hands since last February. Probably not the job he envisioned then or now. Sources indicate that many Bureau employees will not mind seeing Don depart.
Edward J. Appel, Sr. served from 1969 to 1997 in the FBI as a Special Agent, Supervisor, Manager and Senior Executive. He specialized in Counterintelligence, taught at FBI Academy in Quantico, supervised a CI/Terrorism squad in San Francisco, conducted Inspections, was the first Agent detailed to National Security Agency, headed an FBIHQ CI analytical unit, served as Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the FBI San Francisco field office and spent over two years as Director of Intelligence Programs for CI, Cryptography, Security and other matters under George Tenet and Rand Beers at the National Security Council, the White House. Afterward, he was security director, consultant, adjunct professor, author of 3 books and private investigator. He is a member of The Steady State.
Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 360 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.