Dan Bongino has said he will leave his role as the FBI’s deputy director in January.<\/p>\n
In a post on X, he thanked President Donald Trump, as well as the director of the FBI and the attorney general “for the opportunity to serve with purpose”.<\/p>\n
It comes after Trump said earlier on Wednesday that the former podcast host “did a great job” in office, and “wants to go back to his show”.<\/p>\n
Bongino, who was appointed to the role by Trump in February, was previously a New York City police officer and a US Secret Service agent assigned to protect Barack Obama. In recent years, he built a large following through his podcast and other media appearances. <\/p>\n
Bongino, a staunch Trump ally, was considered a surprise pick for the role \u2013 which had previously been held by career agents \u2013 because he had no prior experience with the agency.<\/p>\n
The FBI Agents Association, which represents around 14,000 current and former agents, had opposed his appointment to the position.<\/p>\n
Announcing his decision in a social media post on Wednesday, he said: “I will be leaving my position with the FBI in January. I want to thank President Trump, AG [Pam] Bondi, and Director [Kash] Patel for the opportunity to serve with purpose.<\/p>\n
“Most importantly, I want to thank you, my fellow Americans, for the privilege to serve you. God bless America, and all those who defend Her.”<\/p>\n
Before joining the agency, Bongino had echoed disinformation and conspiracy theories about Trump’s false claim that he won the 2020 election, and about the 6 January 2021 pipe bomb investigation. <\/p>\n
Bongino had also questioned whether sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had taken his own life in a New York prison cell in 2019 as he awaited trial. <\/p>\n
In July, the US justice department and FBI released a memo that said Epstein did take his own life.<\/p>\n
The memo frustrated many of Trump’s supporters, who echoed the Epstein conspiracy theories and rejected the justice department’s findings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dan Bongino has said he will leave his role as the FBI’s deputy director in January. In a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-197432","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}