Dan Bongino’s less-than-triumphant return to the MAGA podcast world after leaving the FBI kicked off with a wave of former fans raging about his handling of the Epstein files.
Bongino, 51, a former New York City cop and Secret Service agent, walked away from his job as deputy director of the FBI on Jan. 3—barely 10 months after President Donald Trump, 79, installed him in the bureau’s No. 2 role.
For years before that promotion, he had built a lucrative podcasting brand railing about the “deep state” and demanding full, unredacted publication of documents relating to the late pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein—which is why many of his fans were shocked to see him apparently help the administration do the opposite.
He attempted to revert to being a media star this week, plastering social platforms with triumphant but aggressive updates, and sitting for an exclusive “Bongino’s Back!” interview on the Trump-aligned Nightly Scroll w/ Hayley Caronia, which aired on Rumble on Wednesday, ahead of the unspecified return of his own show.
Marking his return to the MAGA media world, Bongino hailed his time in the administration as “the experience of a lifetime” and declared war on “life-losers, grifters and bums” he claimed were trying to hijack the movement.
But Bongino’s MAGA-coded victory lap appears to have backfired with much of his own audience, who flooded the comments under his first interview with furious accusations that he sold them out on Epstein.
While some fans remained loyal and thanked Bongino for his “service,” others were less kind. One commenter dismissed him as a “pedo protector.”
Another wrote: “0 Epstein Arrests, 0 Deep State Arrests… Dan as someone who watched your show almost every day, you have a lot to explain WTF happened.”
Others zeroed in on what they saw as a glaring contrast between his years of anti-FBI fire-breathing and his conduct in office. “ZERO DEEP STATE ARRESTS. IMAGINE TALKING FOR TEN YEARS ABOUT TAKING DOWN THE DEEP STATE. GOING TO FBI FOR A YEAR AND PRETENDING YOU DIDNT FAIL,” one post raged.
Another ex-fan complained: “I wish Dan hadn’t taken that FBI job, he totally destroyed and f–ked his credibility… I believed he would make a difference… the BS that was comin from him in that job was disgusting and massive betrayal to his base and MAGA!… I’m horrified and disgusted!”
Echoing the same sense of betrayal, one wrote, “I wish Dan hadn’t taken that FBI job, he totally destroyed and f–ked his credibility.”
One viewer wrote simply: “Just came for the comments lol.”
The fury has been building for months as more details emerged about Bongino’s role in the so-called “Special Redaction Project” that gutted MAGA expectations around Trump’s promise to unveil everything the government held on Epstein.
An internal email, obtained via FOIA and reported by Bloomberg, showed that Bongino was looped in on a memo about redactions to the files on his second day in the job.
After years of using his show to demand total transparency, he instead defended delays as vital to protect victims, then largely fell silent as the Trump administration oversaw a months-long redaction sprint that left many of his own supporters feeling conned.
By December, White House insiders were openly predicting that Bongino would be pushed out as a convenient scapegoat for the messy Epstein rollout, even as the FBI publicly denied that.
He ultimately announced in an X post that he would leave in January, thanking Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and FBI Director Kash Patel, and signaling that he planned to return to pro-Trump broadcasting.
The Justice Department has now blown the initial Epstein Files Transparency Act deadline, dumping only a heavily redacted sliver of material while hanging on to millions of pages under a “Special Redaction Project” that has left victims, lawmakers, and Trump’s own supporters furious over how little new information has emerged.
With Bongino back behind the microphone and teasing a full-scale revival of The Dan Bongino Show later this year, there are questions over whether the listeners who made his career out of Epstein outrage will still be there.
The Daily Beast has contacted Bongino for comment.
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