Background and career
Daniel John Bongino ( bon-JEE-noh; born December 4, 1974) is an American conservative podcaster, radio host, and former law enforcement officer who served as the 20th deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 2025 to 2026. He hosted The Dan Bongino Show on Rumble and previously hosted Unfiltered with Dan Bongino on Fox News until 2023. Bongino began his career as a New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer from 1995 to 1999 before serving as a U.S. Secret Service agent from 1999 to 2011. He later unsuccessfully ran for Congress three times as a Republican. On February 23, 2025, President Donald Trump announced that Bongino had been named the next deputy director of the FBI. He assumed office on March 17, after concluding his commentating roles on March 14. On December 17, 2025, Bongino announced on Twitter that he would leave his post in January 2026; he officially left his position on January 3.
Daniel John Bongino was born and raised in Queens, New York City. He is of Italian descent. He grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens. He graduated from Archbishop Molloy High School, a Catholic all-male high school in Jamaica, Queens, in 1992. He attended Queens College, earning bachelor's and master's degrees in psychology. He also earned a Master of Business Administration degree from Pennsylvania State University.
Bongino worked as a police officer for the New York City Police Department from 1995 to 1999. Bongino joined the United States Secret Service in 1999 as a special agent. In 2002 he left the New York Field Office to become an instructor at the Secret Service Training Academy in Beltsville, Maryland. In 2006, he was assigned to the Presidential Protection Division during George W. Bush's second term. He remained on protective duty after Barack Obama became president, leaving in May 2011 to run for the U.S. Senate. Also in 2011, The Baltimore Sun reported that Bongino was the lead investigator of a car rental fraud scheme. His work contributed to two people being indicted on federal wire fraud charges. Bongino was criticized by former colleagues at the Secret Service for using his Secret Service background as part of his run for political office and for his claim of having secret information based on conversations he overheard in the Obama White House. A former colleague accused him of "trying to draw attention to himself and...hijacking the Secret Service brand." Bongino said he had access to "high-level discussions" in the White House. Bongino rejected birtherism, the claim that President Obama was born outside the United States.
Bongino has been a radio host and commentator on both local and national programs. He has guest-hosted The Sean Hannity Show and The Mark Levin Show and has filled in on WMAL-FM in Washington, D.C., and WBAL in Baltimore. He was a paid contributor to NRATV until December 2018. He also guest-hosted Hannity on Fox News in December 2018. In December 2019, Bongino launched the Bongino Report as an alternative to the Drudge Report. He criticized the Drudge Report's founder, Matt Drudge, for allegedly shifting away from supporting Donald Trump. In October 2020, Politico reported that Bongino's posts on Facebook were routinely among the most shared on the platform. Following the January 6 United States Capitol attack, Bongino's Twitter account was temporarily suspended on January 7 for violating the platform's civic integrity policy. On his podcast, he argued that political violence had been normalized by leftist movements and accused liberal media outlets of hypocrisy in their coverage of protests. In March 2021, Westwood One signed Bongino to replace The Rush Limbaugh Show on its talk radio stations while continuing to carry his one-hour podcast. In May of that year, Fox News announced he would host Unfiltered with Dan Bongino, which premiered on June 5. Between July and August 2021, he hosted Canceled in the USA, a five-part Fox Nation series on cancel culture. Talkers Magazine estimated his radio show had 8.5 million listeners as of October 2021, ranking second among programs competing to succeed Rush Limbaugh. On October 19, 2021, Bongino said that he opposed corporate COVID-19 vaccine mandates, although he said he was vaccinated. He called on Westwood One parent company Cumulus Media to end their COVID-19 vaccine mandate, which had been announced in September. Unvaccinated employees at Cumulus had already been fired on October 11 and replaced. "You can have me or the mandate. But you can't have both of us", Bongino said on his show. After taking nearly two weeks off, he returned to announce he was negotiating his ultimatum with Cumulus, and starting a fund for former employees of Cumulus fired because of the vaccination mandate. Brian Rosenwald, a talk radio historian, believed Bongino's request was never much of an ultimatum, seeing little reason for Cumulus or its host to sever ties. Rosenwald commented:
I think it was a cynical ploy, to some extent. There was an incentive for him to stay with them because of that platform, and they've invested a lot of money in launching this show and building it up. In a December 2021 interview with The New Yorker, Bongino stated that he had been vaccinated for COVID-19 at the advice of his doctor due to his lymphoma. In January 2022, YouTube permanently banned Bongino for attempting to circumvent a temporary suspension related to a video questioning the efficacy of masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to the ban, he had already moved his podcast to Rumble. On April 20, 2023, Bongino announced his departure from Fox News, citing failed contract negotiations. On December 11, 2022, Bongino announced plans to end his radio show at the conclusion of his contract. Cumulus began phasing his show out of its stations' lineups in June 2023. However, in December 2023, he reversed course, securing a multi-year contract extension with Westwood One. Upon Bongino's acceptance of a position as deputy director of the FBI in 2025, Westwood One replaced Bongino with Vince Coglianese, a personality based at WMAL-FM. After his resignation from the Trump administration in January 2026, Bongino revived The Dan Bongino Show podcast on Rumble. Westwood One announced in August 2026 that they had rehired Bongino, and that he would begin hosting the new drive time show The Bongino Report PM beginning August 24. The "PM" suffix reflects that Bongino was also tapped to launch The Bongino Report AM as an early-morning show beginning on September 21, 2026, which will replace its existing newsmagazine America in the Morning.
Bongino ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in Maryland in 2012. Former gubernatorial candidate Brian Murphy was his campaign chairman. Bongino won the Republican primary on April 3, 2012, with 33.8 percent of the vote, defeating nine other candidates. He lost the general election in a landslide, taking only 26.6% of the vote against incumbent Democrat Ben Cardin in a three-way election battle.
