Dan Bongino, a former New York City police officer and Secret Service agent turned right-wing pundit and podcaster, will be deputy FBI director. President Trump said new FBI director Kash Patel appointed Bongino. The announcement came after the FBI. Agents Association told its members that Patel had privately acknowledged that the next deputy director should be an FBI agent, reports the New York Times. In addition, Patel will become acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. FBI managers were told that up to 1,500 staff and agents would be transferred out of the bureau’s Washington, D.C., headquarters to satellite offices across the U.S., the Washington Post reports. The news came as Patel took his oath of office and said he would be "streamlining our operations at headquarters while bolstering the presence of field agents across the nation." About 1,000 agents and administrative employees will be relocated from the J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown D.C. to offices in cities that the Trump administration has designated as high crime locations. An additional 500 would be reassigned to the bureau’s large satellite headquarters in Huntsville, Ala.
At his swearing-in, Patel promised to deliver “accountability within the FBI” and “a singular system of justice for all Americans.” The Hoover Building is the base for the bureau’s leadership and the central location for large operational units, including the counterintelligence, national security and cyber teams. The headquarters also has a heavy contingent of non-agent staff who oversee and perform the FBI’s administrative functions, including human resources, budgeting, hiring, information technology and security operations. Before his nomination, had vowed to shutter the building and turn it into a “museum to the Deep State.” He made similar comments at his confirmation hearing and in appearances on conservative TV news shows. “One of my biggest personal recommendations is … you send those 7,000 agents in the headquarters building downrange to chase down rapists, to chase down murderers, to chase down drug traffickers, and let the cops be cops on the streets across America,” Patel said in August.
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