FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino officially stepped down from his position at the bureau on Jan. 3, hours after President Donald Trump confirmed that Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro was in U.S. custody.
Bongino, responding to a
post on X in which he praised the capture of Maduro, said, “It was a busy last day on the job.”
“This will be my last post on this account,” Bongino wrote. “Tomorrow I return to civilian life. It’s been an incredible year thanks to the leadership and decisiveness of President Trump.”
The deputy director added that “it was an honor of a lifetime” to work alongside FBI Director Kash Patel while serving the American people.
“See you on the other side,” Bongino said.
In mid-December, Bongino wrote on social media that he
planned to leave the bureau in January, but did not specify the exact date.
Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on Dec. 17 that Bongino had done a “great job” at the bureau but that “I think he wants to go back to his show,” referring to “The Dan Bongino Show” on Rumble.
Years before Bongino became a political commentator on Fox News in 2013, he was a New York Police Department officer and then a special agent for the U.S. Secret Service.
When he joined the FBI in February 2025, it was Bongino’s first time working for the nation’s primary domestic intelligence and law enforcement agency.
Patel
reposted Bongino’s retirement announcement to his own page on X Saturday night, but did not comment.
When Bongino first announced his departure, Patel said he is “the best partner I could’ve asked for in helping restore this FBI.”
“He not only completed his mission—he far exceeded it. We will miss him but I’m thankful he accepted the call to serve,” Patel
wrote on Dec. 17. “Our country is better and safer for it.”
Bongino highlighted some statistics of the FBI’s operations over the past year in a
post on Dec. 30, 2025, noting the bureau had made more than 50,000 arrests—including more than 30,000 that were for violent crimes—had seized more than 2,000 kilograms (4,400 pounds) of fentanyl, and increased arrests for “Nihilistic Violent Extremism” by 490 percent.
The United States also saw a significant drop in the national murder rate over the past year, and the FBI located more than 6,000 child victims, an increase of 22 percent, Bongino added.
Bongino’s tenure at the FBI also saw some
infighting with the Department of Justice, the bureau’s parent agency, over its handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files after Bongino had spent considerable time on his podcast demanding answers about the now-deceased sex offender and his 2019 death, which was officially ruled a suicide.
Bongino wrote a
post on X in late July 2025 that said the FBI was “committed to stamping out public corruption and the political weaponization of both law enforcement and intelligence operations,” but that what he learned conducting 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 said at the time, but did not elaborate.
Earlier that month, Trump had dismissed reports of friction between Bongino and others at the FBI and Justice Department over the release of the Epstein files, telling
reporters on Air Force One that Bongino’s a “very good guy” and that “he’s in good shape.”
Jacki Thrapp and Joseph Lord contributed to this report.
