In a normal administration, the FBI has a director and a deputy director, with the latter helping to oversee day-to-day operations at the bureau. The Trump administration, however, isn’t normal at all, which helps explain why the FBI will, at least for now, have two deputy directors. The New York Times reported:
The Trump administration said on Monday that it had tapped the Missouri attorney general, Andrew Bailey, to be a deputy director of the F.B.I., in what many rank-and-file agents described as a surprising arrangement. Mr. Bailey would join the current deputy director, Dan Bongino, who as a popular right-wing podcast host repeatedly railed against the bureau, in overseeing the day-to-day operations of the agency.
As the bureau struggles with abuses, misuses, purges and Trump-era politicization, there are three elements to this worth keeping in mind.
The first is that this new arrangement is bizarre. In fact, the Times’ report noted, “The appointment of Mr. Bailey bewildered many current and former F.B.I. agents, who said they had never heard of a co-deputy director.”
The second is that this appears to signal the beginning of the end of Bongino’s tenure. When Donald Trump 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. Five months later, it’s clear that he hasn’t enjoyed the job.
As recently as May, Bongino became emotional on Fox News, not discussing a gut-wrenching case, but while talking about how difficult he found his 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.’”
Now that the president has hired a different FBI deputy director, the odds of Bongino finding some other job he likes more seem to have just improved.
But perhaps most striking of all is the administration’s newest hire.
The Times’ report noted in passing that Bailey has earned a reputation for making “bombastic” partisan attacks, which is true, although it understates matters.
The outgoing Missouri attorney general might not be a household name (at least, that is, not yet), but his record during a brief career in elected office is one of a hyperpartisan Republican activist. When prosecutors in New York, for example, successfully held Trump accountable for his business crimes, Bailey tried to sue New York to prevent sentencing after the guilty verdicts. (The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the effort.) This is the same far-right lawyer who wanted then-President Joe Biden to be criminally prosecuted for his student loan debt forgiveness policy. He also launched an investigation into Google, alleging that the tech giant was secretly conspiring to suppress conservative views, which dovetailed with a related investigation into AI chatbots that Bailey said were too anti-Trump. Bailey has even fought to keep exonerated prisoners behind bars, while pushing weird ideas to advance his anti-abortion agenda. Put another way, under Kash Patel, the FBI has struggled. With Bailey joining the bureau’s leadership team, it’s likely to get worse.
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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