Dan Bongino Will Help Turn the FBI Into Trump’s Revenge Machine

Donald Trump continued the MAGAfication of federal law enforcement over the weekend, announcing Sunday that the right-wing media personality and conspiracy peddler Dan Bongino would be installed as deputy FBI director. “Fairness, Justice, Law and Order will be brought back to America,” Trump wrote in a social media post announcing the move, “and quickly.”

“Thank you Mr. President,” the loyalist replied.

Bongino—a former New York City police officer, Secret Service agent, and failed congressional candidate—will serve as number two to fellow Trump devotee Kash Patel, who was sworn in as FBI director on Friday after being narrowly confirmed by the GOP-held Senate: “This is effin crazy,” Patel said upon officially assuming office.

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Indeed it is. Patel, a conspiracy theorist who has vowed to go after Trump’s enemies, was too extreme even for William Barr, who served as attorney general at the end of Trump’s first term. (He’d lead the FBI “over my dead body,” Barr wrote in his memoir.) Now, he controls the nation’s top federal law enforcement agency.

Like Patel, Bongino, a pro-Trump podcaster, lacks the typical qualifications for his role, which normally goes to a senior agent. But he does meet the president’s main prerequisite for employment: unequivocal loyalty to him personally. After serving in the NYPD, and then in presidential security details, Bongino has made a career out of spreading Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2016 and 2020 elections, COVID-19, and Democrats’ supposed weaponization of the federal government against conservatives. With two top allies at the head of the bureau, Trump is now poised to turn it into a weapon of his own. “My entire life right now,” Bongino said in 2018, “is about owning the libs,” whom he apparently regards as “pure, unadulterated evil.”

Republicans cheered the appointment of Bongino, whose role does not require Senate confirmation: “This. Is. Everything,” the MAGA Representative Lauren Boebert posted. But the move is, of course, extraordinarily reckless, and reflective of an unbound president who has quickly consolidated power and put America’s democratic system on its heels. “Selecting another right-wing Fox personality and internet troll…as Deputy FBI Director means two things,” Democratic Senator Adam Schiff wrote Sunday. “Trump installs another loyalist who won’t say no to any immoral or unethical act. And our law enforcement agencies—and the public safety—are further degraded.”

But Democrats have been unable to stop—or even slow—Trump’s power-grab so far. And Republicans have been unwilling, with party leadership on Capitol Hill enabling and in many cases egging on his anti-democratic siege, which has brought America to a supremely dangerous moment. “I know this feels like a bad dream,” as Senator Chris Murphy wrote Sunday. “It isn’t.”