For FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, the writing has been on the wall for a while. After weeks of scuttlebutt about the looming departure of the former far-right podcaster, MS NOW reported Wednesday afternoon that Bongino had quietly told confidants that he planned to leave his job early in the new year and would not be returning to headquarters to work this month.
Shortly afterward, Donald Trump, who chose the media personality for the job, started referring to Bongino’s tenure at the bureau in the past tense. The bureau’s deputy director confirmed the news via social media about an hour later.
By any fair measure, this was a job Bongino never should have had in the first place. When the president tapped him for the FBI leadership post in March, it was immediately recognized as a ridiculous choice: Bongino, a right-wing provocateur and podcast personality, was spectacularly unqualified.
To make matters worse, it wasn’t long before it became clear that he didn’t even like the job he’d been given. Just two months into his tenure, Bongino became emotional on Fox News while talking about how difficult he found the job.
“I gave up everything for this,” he complained. “I stare at these four walls all day in D.C., by myself, divorced from my wife — not divorced, but I mean separated, divorced — and it’s hard. I mean, we love each other, and it’s hard to be apart.”
During the same appearance, Bongino said of his work at the FBI, “People ask me all the time, ‘Do you like it?’ I say, ‘No, I don’t.’”
Three months later, Trump tapped Andrew Bailey, the Missouri attorney general at the time, to serve as the FBI’s co-deputy director — the bureau had never had two different people serving in this position — increasing the odds that Bongino would soon find some other job he liked more.
All the while, it was painfully obvious that Bongino wasn’t handling his responsibilities especially well. As a New York Times report summarized, his departure announcement brings an end “to his brief but tumultuous stint at the bureau, where he was known for his volcanic temper, missteps and hyperactive presence on social media.”
As the dust settles on this avoidable fiasco, it’s also worth appreciating the larger lesson.
For generations, the FBI deputy director, who oversees day-to-day operations at the bureau, was recognized as an administrative position held by senior agents with extensive bureau experience. According to NBC News’ reporting, this trend was supposed to continue: Director Kash Patel privately agreed earlier this year that the next FBI deputy director needed to be an active special agent with operational expertise and experience, as well as institutional knowledge and respect within the bureau.
Trump, however, didn’t care. He instead chose a conspiratorial media personality with literally no experience in federal law enforcement, who brought with him a record that included routine and ridiculous attacks against the FBI, which he’d previously condemned as “irredeemably corrupt.”
In other words, the president insisted on an experiment in amateurism: What would happen if the White House put a volatile podcast personality in charge of day-to-day operations at the FBI? The answer, we know now, is “nothing good.” Complicating matters is the familiarity of the circumstances. This administrative blunder happened in parallel with other misguided experiments. What would happen if Republicans chose an anti-vaccine activist to serve as the nation’s health secretary? What would happen if they invited a billionaire megadonor to oversee a destructive “efficiency” operation? What would happen if they confirmed a scandal-plagued Fox News host to lead the Pentagon? What would happen if they allowed a different podcast personality to become the FBI director? What would happen if they nominated a television game-show host who didn’t know anything about governing, and who never served a day in any public post, to serve as the chief executive of the world’s preeminent superpower? What we’re dealing with, in other words, are overlapping experiments in amateurism, each of which is failing in tragic and consequential ways. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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