NBC Reporter Says How Dan Bongino Will Run the FBI Is a ‘Great Mystery,’ Gives Kash Patel Credit For Changing Tack
Ken Dilanian, NBC News’s justice correspondent, joined MSNBC on Monday to report on former Fox News personality and podcaster Dan Bongino official becoming the deputy director of the FBI.
“And now to the first day on the job as the second-in-command at the FBI for right-wing podcaster Dan Bongino, NBC’s Ken Dilanian is covering this for us. Ken, what do we know about how he’s going to approach the job?” asked anchor Chris Jansing.
“Chris, how Dan Bongino is going to run the FBI is one of the great mysteries, and it’s a consequential question. He’s been a purveyor of conspiracy theories and disinformation about the FBI on his podcast for the last 10 years,” replied Dilanian, adding:
He recently accused the FBI of lying and covering up. He said that they knew the identities of the person or persons who placed pipe bombs at the RNC and DNC the day before the January 6th attack, even though the FBI says they don’t know the identity of that suspect. Those are the kind of things he’s been saying and now he’s going to be confronted with people who actually know the truth inside the FBI.
It will be interesting to see how he squares that circle. What we do know is that in his last podcast yesterday, he did say that he was moving into a new role, that he was sort of stepping away from politics and that he would no longer be the kind of political animal that he has been in the past. Take a listen.
“My social media accounts are not going to be abandoned, but I won’t be posting about politics. It’d be inappropriate during my time. There’s understandable restrictions on that, which make perfect sense. I have to stay out of the political space because it’s the right thing to do and it’s the rules. I’m not going there to be some partisan,” Bongino said in the clip from his show.
“So what’s interesting, Chris, is today on that podcast, his successor interviewed Tucker Carlson, who made a point of saying that Bongino has a lot of enemies among what he called a lot of bad people inside the FBI that he would have to deal with. That’s the kind of vision that Tucker Carlson and Dan Bongino until now have articulated about the nation’s premier law enforcement agency,” continued Dilanian, concluding:
Now what’s interesting is Kash Patel, the FBI director, who has also been very critical of the FBI, since taking office, he’s kind of put that criticism aside. He’s been a booster of the FBI.
He just unveiled a reorganization plan over the weekend that we reported that a lot of people are giving fairly high marks to, in fact. And he’s been trumpeting FBI operations on social media. So it will be interesting to see if Dan Bongino also changes tack, Chris.
Watch above via MSNBC.
