President Donald Trump tapped a conservative media persona and conspiracy theorist for an enormous job in his administration.
Dan Bongino, a former U.S. Secret Service agent who later hosted a Fox News 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 serious 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 a number of the largest whoppers he’s unfold.
He’s a superspreader of 2020 election lies.
Researchers have identified Bongino as one of the crucial efficient spreaders of misinformation across the 2020 election, noting he spent hours of his podcast and posted broadly 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 each the 2016 and 2020 election,” he as soon as told his listeners.
Bongino, who has almost 6 million followers on Facebook, had over 7.7 million interactions on Fb the week of the 2020 election, The New York Times 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. “Don’t allow them to fleece this factor once more,” he said on an episode of his podcast.
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He hinted that DEI insurance policies and corruption have been guilty for the assassination makes an attempt in opposition to Trump.
Bongino, who claimed the FBI was “irredeemably corrupt” after its brokers raided Mar-a-Lago, raised range, fairness and inclusion insurance policies as a attainable perpetrator behind the Secret Service’s failure to forestall an assassination try on Trump final summer time.
“They put out a thousand tweets about all this DEI stuff,” he mentioned of the Secret Service. “Do I do know that’s associated right here? I don’t, I’m simply saying, like ― you’ve gotten one job and just 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 one among them could possibly be mishandling details about his whereabouts.
“Is there a honeypot entice happening within the Secret Service?” he asked on an episode of his podcast. “Is there a man or a lady within the Secret Service having a relationship with somebody who shouldn’t be who they are saying they’re?”
In an August episode of his podcast, Bongino questioned the integrity of the FBI’s investigation into the assassination makes an attempt. “People, the FBI is at it once more. I don’t belief these individuals in any respect,” he wrote on social media alongside a clip from his podcast.
The Washington Put up by way of Getty Photos
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.
“One thing is happening right here. The place is the video of him dropping the bomb? Why don’t we’ve got it? Why does it seem manipulated?” he mentioned in a January 2024 episode.
“Girls and gents, anyone’s hiding one thing, and it’s not small. They’re hiding one thing freaking enormous,” he continued.
He’s additionally pushed the theory that President Barack Obama’s administration had at the very least one FBI agent tasked with spying on the 2016 Trump marketing campaign. Whereas discussing the concept 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 briefly 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 “ineffective” at stopping the virus’ unfold regardless of research to 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 permanently.
Shortly after, Google pulled all ads 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 regardless of being vaccinated had nothing to do with science.”
He propped up Russia’s baseless claims a couple of U.S. assault.
In 2022, Bongino recommended Biden’s administration might have been liable for the explosions that ruptured a set of pure gasoline pipelines — Nord Stream 1 and a couple of — working between Russia and Germany. The act of sabotage, the Wall Street Journal reports, 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 loopy sufficient to do that to mild a spark which may trigger World Battle III?” he requested. “The reply is, ‘I wouldn’t be shocked, and I wager neither would you.’”
“The motivations of the Biden administration and the inexperienced agenda, I feel, are far higher than the motivations of Russia,” he continued.
