Bongino: “We Gotta Get Kash” for FBI Director

by Sharon Rondeau

(Nov. 19, 2024) — On his Tuesday Rumble broadcast, former Secret Service agent and NYPD officer Dan Bongino advocated for President-Elect Donald J. Trump’s next FBI director to be former Justice Department attorney and aide to former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) Kash Patel.

According to his Wikipedia biography, Patel, 44, graduated from law school in 2005 and launched his legal career as a Florida state public defender.

Wikipedia further reports:

In 2014, Patel was hired as a trial attorney in the United States Department of Justice National Security Division, where he simultaneously served as a legal liaison to the Joint Special Operations Command.^[17][19] In 2017, Patel was appointed senior counsel on counterterrorism at the House Select Committee on Intelligence.^[17][15][a]

…According to The New York Times, Patel was the primary author of the 2018 Nunes memo, alleging FBI misconduct in its application for a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for electronic surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.^[21] That claim was disputed by the committee’s staff director, by a spokesman for Nunes, and by unattributed sources interviewed by India Abroad. Patel did not offer a public comment on the matter.^[20] The New York Times opined that the memo was widely dismissed as “biased” containing “cherry-picked facts”, but “it galvanized President Trump’s allies and made Mr. Patel a hero among them”.^[22]

“I need a favor. We gotta get Kash through, folks. FBI reform is critical,” Bongino opined at 11:22 a.m. on the live show. “Post-911, the FBI, which had previously focused largely on serious criminal investigations…that was their thing…they always had an intel function, but they dipped themselves way deep in the pool and have now become basically a domestic intelligence-gathering operation, and the mission-creep has taken over,” he said. “It has destroyed the FBI because they focused their eye on all the wrong people…”

Patel “totally gets the problem” with the FBI, Bongino asserted while airing video of an interview Patel conducted on The Shawn Ryan Show (begins at the 24:00 mark).

“The FBI’s footprint has gotten so freakin’ big, and the biggest problem the FBI has had has come out of its intel shops,” Patel told Ryan, a former U.S. Navy SEAL combat veteran and CIA contractor. “I’d break that component out of it. I’d shut down the FBI Hoover building on Day One and reopening the next day as a museum of the Deep State, and I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send ’em across America to chase down criminals…”

Patel said the thousands of agents are “looking for the next government promotion” or “looking for their next fancy government title.”

Just last week, Patel was thought to be in the running for CIA director, which Trump soon after indicated will be former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, if confirmed by the Senate.

He is “well”-acquainted with Patel, Bongino disclosed, but said it does not bear on his assessment that he is the right person for the job. “This is strictly a ‘spreadsheet’ thing. There is no one else out there available…who said what he just said,” Bongino told his audience. “The intel function has gotten out of control; they’re not chasing bad guys anymore; they’re chasing intel cases, and a lot of these intel cases are on political targets like ‘Moms for Liberty’ and others…”

“That clip sums up exactly what we need to do,” Bongino continued. “We need to break up the ‘Washington, DC headquarters’ mindset with the FBI…You gotta be close to the criminals so you can lock ’em up…Kash is the guy. How do we know Kash is the guy?…Always measure the effectiveness of a pick by the reaction. If the Left isn’t melting down, you can basically assume that that’s the wrong guy.”

One such reaction published in The Hill, Bongino said, indicates Patel would be effective.

An article Monday in Newsweek quotes “former FBI Special Agent Daniel Brunner” in comments to CNN stating, “Putting someone like Kash Patel in the position of director of the FBI is, I believe, extremely, extremely dangerous because you just alluded to that his resume isn’t traditional. There is nothing on his resume other than three years as a line U.S. attorney at the DOJ.”

Currently attorney Christopher Wray, nominated by Trump and confirmed by the Senate in 2017, leads the agency and said he has no plans to resign, although Trump had called for his departure prior to the November 5 election.

An article published Saturday by The New Republic not designated as “opinion” begins:

Donald Trump has his eye on yet another unqualified lightweight to lead a key agency, as the president-elect reportedly is considering loyalist Kash Patel to lead the FBI. 

CNN reported Friday that Trump’s right-wing allies are trying to convince him to fire Christopher Wray, whom Trump appointed in 2017 after firing James Comey for allegedly mishandling the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. 

During his presidential campaign, the president-elect expressed his displeasure at Wray, who drew his ire after Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was searched in 2022 due to alleged mishandling of classified documents. FBI directors are supposed to serve a single 10-year term, but Patel’s appointment would make him the third FBI director in seven years. 

Commentary at CNN by Shawn Turner, “Former Communications Director, U.S. National Intelligence,” asserts a Patel choice would be “startling.”

“He clearly has this sort of ‘burn-it-down’ mentality,” Turner remarked. “…We don’t make sweeping decisions based on melodramatic statements like ‘The FBI is corrupt so we need to clean house.'”

“I have no inside information on this at all,” Bongino continued. “…I did speak to some people…They asked me my personal opinion…’I think Kash Patel’s the guy,'” Bongino said, invoking his appearance Saturday night at the “UFC” event at Madison Square Garden where he was seen with Trump; his son, Donald Trump, Jr.; UFC CEO and Trump supporter Dana White; HHS secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.; and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, among others.

“Flood the zone,” Bongino told his listeners, suggesting they express their support for Patel on social media.

He then mocked the political left for judging individuals with certain types of tattoos to be “fascists” or Christian zealots, briefly referring to Christian-themed tattoos Trump’s Department of Defense (DOD) Secretary nominee, U.S. Army National Guard and combat veteran Pete Hegseth, is known to have.

In the same vein, Bongino revealed three tattoos he acquired consisting of a large Christian cross on his right upper arm; an American eagle on his left upper arm; and a smaller “Jesus fish” on the center upper portion of his back.

During the parody, he said, “I’m out of the Secret Service,” perhaps a reference to speculation he is under consideration to direct the troubled agency following two assassination attempts on Trump within two months earlier this year.

Following each attempt, Bongino had much to say about alleged mismanagement at the agency and was called to testify to Congress about it.

Former U.S. Rep., 2024 U.S. Senate candidate and former FBI special agent Mike Rogers is reportedly also under consideration for the FBI directorship as he was in 2017 after Trump fired then-FBI Director James Comey.

On Sunday, Trump ally and longtime Republican presidential adviser Roger Stone reposted an article from The Gateway Pundit claiming Rogers is a “neocon” who is “the wrong choice for FBI director.”

The Post & Email was unable to locate the article at TGP, though similar ones at the site object to his candidacy for the post.