President Donald Trump tapped a conservative media persona and conspiracy theorist for a giant job in his administration.
Dan Bongino, a former U.S. Secret Service agent who later hosted a Fox Information present and pilots a preferred right-wing podcast, is deputy director of the FBI regardless of having no management expertise on the division. His appointment didn’t require a Senate affirmation.
Bongino, who unsuccessfully ran for Senate in 2012, is a significant promoter of a few of Trump’s favourite conspiracy theories in regards to the 2020 election and COVID-19. He’s additionally a “significant shareholder” within the right-wing video platform Rumble, the corporate mentioned.
Listed here are among the largest whoppers he’s unfold.
He’s a superspreader of 2020 election lies.
Researchers have recognized Bongino as one of the vital efficient spreaders of misinformation across the 2020 election, noting he spent hours of his podcast and posted extensively shared movies on social media selling debunked claims about poll harvesting and suspicious votes.
“The FBI and the CIA, members of it, unquestionably tried to rig both the 2016 and 2020 election,” he as soon as advised his listeners.
Bongino, who has practically 6 million followers on Fb, had over 7.7 million interactions on Fb the week of the 2020 election, The New York Occasions discovered on the time.
In Could 2024, he warned his listeners that they need to nonetheless be leery of Democrats “stealing an election” from Trump. “Do not let them fleece this thing again,” he mentioned on an episode of his podcast.
Wealthy Polk by way of Getty Photographs
He hinted that DEI insurance policies and corruption have been in charge for the assassination makes an attempt towards Trump.
Bongino, who claimed the FBI was “irredeemably corrupt” after its brokers raided Mar-a-Lago, raised variety, fairness and inclusion insurance policies as a potential wrongdoer behind the Secret Service’s failure to stop an assassination try on Trump final summer season.
“They put out a thousand tweets about all this DEI stuff,” he mentioned of the Secret Service. “Do I know that’s related here? I don’t, I’m just saying, like ― you have one job and only one job.”
After one other individual was apprehended for plotting an assassination try on Trump in September, Bongino requested whether or not there could possibly be a “mole” among the many brokers assigned to guard Trump or that certainly one of them could possibly be mishandling details about his whereabouts.
“Is there a honeypot trap going on in the Secret Service?” he requested on an episode of his podcast. “Is there a guy or a woman in the Secret Service having a relationship with someone who is not who they say they are?”
In an August episode of his podcast, Bongino questioned the integrity of the FBI’s investigation into the assassination makes an attempt. “Folks, the FBI is at it again. I don’t trust these people at all,” he wrote on social media alongside a clip from his podcast.
The Washington Publish by way of Getty Photographs
His FBI conspiracy theories don’t finish there.
Bongino has additionally claimed that footage the FBI launched of the Jan. 6, 2021, pipe bomb suspect might have been “manipulated” and that one thing sinister is afoot.
“Something is going on here. Where is the video of him dropping the bomb? Why don’t we have it? Why does it appear manipulated?” he mentioned in a January 2024 episode.
“Ladies and gentlemen, somebody’s hiding something, and it’s not small. They are hiding something freaking huge,” he continued.
He’s additionally pushed the speculation that President Barack Obama’s administration had at the least one FBI agent tasked with spying on the 2016 Trump marketing campaign. Whereas discussing the thought on Tucker Carlson’s Fox Information present on the time, Bongino merely cited “reporting.”
He was kicked off YouTube for spreading COVID-19 misinformation.
In 2022, YouTube quickly suspended Bongino’s account, which had round 900,000 subscribers, for spreading misinformation in regards to the COVID-19 pandemic. Notably, he claimed masks have been “useless” at stopping the virus’ unfold regardless of analysis on the contrary ― one thing YouTube mentioned violated its misinformation coverage.
When Bongino tried to circumnavigate the ban by posting from one other account, the video platform banned him completely.
Shortly after, Google pulled all adverts from Bongino’s web site. He mentioned one of many items of content material Google cited was about Anthony Fauci, then the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, and mentioned that his “use of masks despite being vaccinated had nothing to do with science.”
He propped up Russia’s baseless claims a couple of U.S. assault.
In 2022, Bongino instructed Biden’s administration might have been accountable for the explosions that ruptured a set of pure fuel pipelines — Nord Stream 1 and a pair of — working between Russia and Germany. The act of sabotage, the Wall Road Journal studies, was carried out by Ukraine, although Russia blamed the U.S.
Bongino backed up the Kremlin’s claims in an episode of his podcast.
“Is the Biden administration crazy enough to do this to light a spark that might cause World War III?” he requested. “The answer is, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised, and I bet neither would you.’”
“The motivations of the Biden administration and the green agenda, I think, are far greater than the motivations of Russia,” he continued.
