What Bongino told CNN in 2011 about his time working for Obama

President Trump just tapped a very unconventional choice for a key post over at the FBI. Dan Bongino, the former Secret Service agent turned right wing media personality, will serve as deputy director. Brian Todd has more on the story.

First, Brian Bongino will wield significant power in his new job. An enormous amount of power. Wolf will be running the bureau's day to day operations, but Bongino is lack of experience at the FBI, and his media background have raised concern among former agents.

President Trump now has two of his most loyal MAGA champions heading the FBI Kash Patel as director and now 50 year old Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent turned right wing podcaster, as deputy director. I got a call from the president, and it couldn't be. Couldn't have been nicer, folks.

It's a lot to walk away from and a lot to walk into. According to former FBI officials who spoke to CNN, who believe the hiring of Bongino will be controversial. And putting somebody in who's never been an FBI agent, is potentially troublesome.

I have no problems with, Dan on Gino's intelligence or his, the fact that he had served with the Secret Service is a bonus. But this is this is going way out of the line of what the FBI's done in the past. That's partly because Bongino has spent considerable time on the air slamming the FBI for its investigations of Donald Trump.

Folks, the FBI is lost. It's broken, irredeemably corrupt. At this point.

Bongino, who served as a New York City police officer in the 1990s, later joined the Secret Service and served on President Barack Obama's protective detail. I interviewed Bongino when he left the Secret Service in 2011 to run for the Senate as a Republican from Maryland, asking him about his newly revealed political loyalty on the opposite side from the president he'd guarded with his life. I want to say personally that I have enormous respect for him, but I just disagree with the ideology that it's a simple ideological play.

That's it. The country's going on the wrong path. Since that failed bid for the Senate on Geno's media profile has skyrocketed, becoming a star and a regular on Fox News, hosting his own hugely popular radio shows and podcasts.

While he did scold the January 6th rioters, he's also supported President Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. We had an election with unbelievably suspect behavior, all the while earning admiration from President Trump. Bongino how about in?

Bongino has been promoting far right views on his podcast Promising Retribution, saying that Trump is going to get revenge against his enemies and saying that Trump's are just ignore court decisions that he doesn't like. Now, as the hands on official handling the bureau's daily operations, Bongino has a unique challenge. The one thing you do not want to do day one is lose the loyalty of the FBI when they see their own management appearing to go off the rail.

You lost them. As for how the FBI's rank and file feels about Dan Bongino, according to a mass email obtained by CNN that was sent to its members just before Donald Trump posted that Bongino had been selected as deputy director. The FBI Agents Association, representing thousands of agents, said it had been told by Kash Patel that the new deputy director would come from within the ranks of the FBI.

Contacted by CNN today, the agents association declined to comment on the appointment of Bongino Wolf. All right. Brian Todd reporting for us.

Thanks, Brian, very much. Joining us now, the former FBI deputy director, Andrew McCabe. Andrew, thanks so much for coming in.

You speak with authority when it comes to the number two position in the FBI. You were the deputy director. let's talk a little bit about Dan Bongino.

You've said that, putting him in this critically important number two role at the FBI in Your word is dangerous. Tell us why. Well, Wolf, the FBI deputy director has an incredibly hard job.

And as you said, I know this personally. they are ultimately responsible for all of the FBI's intelligence collection and investigative activity. You are the operational manager.

the chief operating officer for the FBI. And it is absolutely imperative that when bad things happen, you are prepared with a, a career's worth of experience and knowledge. the legal, understanding to be able to make decisions quickly to avoid further crisis.

learning the organization from day one, knowing nothing about it is a luxury that FBI deputy directors don't have. Which is why every one of the deputy directors, up until this point for 117 years have been experienced FBI agents. They've had experience in the FBI.

He has not experience in the FBI. Bongino is a right wing conspiracy theorist, as you well know. He's an election denier.

I want to get your reaction to something Bongino recently said on his podcast. Watch this. Folks, my recommendation is Donald Trump should ignore this.

It's this judge is obviously, not acting constitutionally at all. It should be ignored. Demanded, resuming all.

But you can't order the executive to spend. I mean, you've effectively usurped the power of the executive. Who's going to arrest him?

The marshals. You guys know who the U. S.

marshals work for? The Department of Justice? That is under the.

Oh, yeah. Executive branch. Donald Trump's going to order his own arrest.

That is he. This is ridiculous. How disturbing is this sort of thinking from someone who will hold one of the most senior, one of the most important law enforcement positions in the U.

S. government, as the most senior FBI agent in the entire organization. The person who is personally responsible for overseeing the work of 12,000 agents to be on television or on the radio, on a podcast advocating to ignore the lawful court order of a federal judge is a terrible mistake, and it sends an awful message to those law enforcement officers who are out there on the street every day trying to uphold the law, follow the law, and follow the orders of federal court judges.

It's a terrible example, and it's one that's going to come back to haunt him. The new FBI director, Kash Patel, as you probably know, has told allies that Robert Cason, the acting, deputy director of the FBI, was the likely pick to keep the job. So what do you think happened?

Well, we've heard, Wolf, from a number of sources inside the organization that the, pushback that Cason and the acting director, Drskell, engaged in with, acting deputy attorney General Bové is what cost them their jobs. And that, to me, is another particularly bad sign, because what it tells us is that any sort of independence, any sort of, pushback, what is perceived to be pushback against blind loyalty to the president and to his orders that are coming through DOJ is something that can now cost you your job in the Federal Bureau of Investigation like never before. See what happens.

Thanks very much.