Dan Bongino
Daniel John Bongino (born December 4, 1974) is an American conservative[1] political commentator, radio show host, author, and former law enforcement officer.
Dan Bongino
Paula Martinez
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In his early career, from 1995 to 1999, he served as a New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer. Next he served as a US Secret Service agent from 1999 to 2011. Bongino ran three times for Congress as a Republican; he was defeated each time.
He serves as a host of The Dan Bongino Show on Rumble. He served as host of the Unfiltered with Dan Bongino on Fox News until April 2023.
Early life and education
Bongino was born and raised in Queens, New York City.[2][3]
In 1992 he graduated from the private Catholic all-male high school, Archbishop Molloy, in Jamaica, Queens. He attended Queens College, where he earned both a bachelor's and master's degree in psychology, and Pennsylvania State University, where he earned a Master of Business Administration.[4]
Career
NYPD
Bongino worked as a police officer for the New York City Police Department from 1995 to 1999.[5]
Secret Service and book publication
Bongino joined the United States Secret Service in 1999 as a special agent.[5][3] 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.[5]
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.[6]
In 2012 Bongino ran a campaign for a U.S. Senate seat for Maryland.[7]
A year later, he published a memoir, Life Inside the Bubble (2013), about his career as a Secret Service agent and political campaign. The book addresses his experiences protecting presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, investigating federal crimes, and mounting a campaign for US Senate.
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.[8][9][2] A former colleague criticized him for trying to use his proximity to President Barack Obama in his political career: "He's trying to draw attention to himself and he's hijacking the Secret Service brand. That's all he's got going for him." Bongino said he had access to "high-level discussions" in the White House.
Unnamed former colleagues say Bongino "tends to exaggerate his importance on the presidential detail and exaggerate his proximity" and that "We don't sit in on meetings at the White House. We don't sit in on high-level meetings."[8] In response to the criticism from an anonymous former colleague, Bongino said, "There's nothing confidential in the book" and "It's not a tell-all. It's my tale of the Secret Service."[7] He rejected Birtherism, the claim that President Obama was born outside the United States.[10]
In January 2016, he published a second book, The Fight: A Secret Service Agent's Inside Account of Security Failings and the Political Machine.[11]
Political views
In 2018, Bongino said, "My entire life right now is about owning the libs. That's it."[39][2][40] He is a supporter of former president Donald Trump.[15][1]
Bongino has called the investigation of possible Trump-Russia collusion a "total scam",[41] and is a proponent of the Spygate conspiracy theory.[42] In May 2018, he was quoted by Trump in a tweet, as saying that former CIA Director John Brennan "has disgraced the entire Intelligence Community. He is the one man who is largely responsible for the destruction of American's faith in the Intelligence Community and in some people at the top of the FBI."[43] Bongino was also quoted as alleging that Brennan was "worried about staying out of jail".[43]
In May 2018, after Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy and some conservative legal experts challenged Trump's claims that the FBI had spied on his 2016 presidential campaign, Bongino claimed Gowdy had been "fooled" by the Department of Justice.[44] In February 2019, he accused Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein of attempting a coup against Trump.[45]
According to Mother Jones, Bongino is a member of Groundswell, a group of conservative activists working to advance conservative causes.[46]
In 2019, Bongino published Exonerated: The Failed Takedown of President Donald Trump by the Swamp. It was on The New York Times Best Seller list with a dagger (the NYT Bestseller list version of an asterisk) indicating the book benefitted from bulk sales.[47] In August 2020, he denied that his book benefited from bulk sales, maintaining the only event at which books were bought in bulk took place over a month after his book appeared on the list.[48]
Bongino reportedly told the House Judiciary Committee during hearings on police brutality that efforts to reduce the funding of police departments were an "abomination" that should be dropped "before someone gets hurt".[49][50]
During the 2020 election, he promoted false and baseless claims of voter fraud.[1] After Joe Biden won the 2020 election and Donald Trump refused to concede, Bongino backed Trump's claims of election fraud,[51] and falsely claimed that the Democrats rigged the election.[52]
Bongino has been a strong critic of face mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic,[3] claiming that face masks are "largely ineffective" and deriding them as "face diapers" on occasion.[1][35]
