OAN Staff Blake Wolf
12:20 PM – Sunday, January 4, 2026
FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino officially stepped down from his post on Sunday after serving less than a year in his post with the bureau.
Bongino, a former New York City police officer, U.S. Secret Service agent, and conservative radio show host, issued his last official social media post as deputy director of the FBI on Saturday, after previously announcing his departure in December.
In a Saturday X post on his official FBI deputy director account, Bongino wrote, “It was a busy last day on the job. This will be my last post on this account. Tomorrow I return to civilian life. It’s been an incredible year thanks to the leadership and decisiveness of President Trump.”
“It was the honor of a lifetime to work with Director [Kash] Patel, and to serve you, the American people. See you on the other side,” Bongino added.
Bongino assumed the position of the No. 2 at the bureau in March, working alongside Patel to transform the FBI by reshifting the focus to law enforcement through the process of sending a large number of agents concentrated in Washington, D.C., out into the field to investigate and tackle violent crime.
Patel and Bongino also promised to restore trust, transparency, and accountability to the bureau, following years of “public corruption and the political weaponization of both law enforcement and intelligence operations.”
In a notable post in July, Bongino revealed that what he has learned throughout “the course of our properly predicted and necessary investigations into these aforementioned matters, has shocked me down to my core. We cannot run a Republic like this. I’ll never be the same after learning what I’ve learned.”
Bongino’s cryptic post did not disclose further context, only that the FBI is going to conduct “righteous and proper investigations by the book in accordance with the law. We are going to get the answers WE ALL DESERVE.”
Closing out 2025, Bongino issued a post revealing that the FBI, under Director Patel’s leadership, conducted 50,000 arrests, 30,000 violent criminal arrests representing double the figure from 2024, 1,800 gangs and criminal enterprises disrupted, 2,000+ kilos of fentanyl seized, and over 6,000 child victims located, among other achievements.
After Bongino announced his departure in mid-December, Patel issued a response, thanking his deputy director for being the “best partner I could’ve asked for in helping restore this FBI.”
“He brought critical reforms to make the organization more efficient, led the successful Summer Heat op, served as the people’s voice for transparency, and delivered major breakthroughs in long unsolved cases like the pipe bomb investigation. And that’s only a small part of the work he went about every single day delivering for America,” Patel wrote of Bongino. “He not only completed his mission – he far exceeded it. We will miss him but I’m thankful he accepted the call to serve. Our country is better and safer for it.”
President Donald Trump also thanked Bongino for his service in December, suggesting that the reasoning for his departure is so that he can return to his radio show, stating, “Dan did a great job. I think he wants to go back to his show.”
Bongino has yet to provide an explicit reasoning for his departure, and will be replaced by co-deputy director Andrew Bailey, who was previously appointed to the role in September.
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