FBI deputy director Dan Bongino is clearing out his office after reportedly admitting he will be leaving the bureau within weeks, according to The New York Times.
Amid the never-ending saga surrounding the will-they, won’t-they release of the Epstein files, Bongino has told people around him he could depart “as soon as this week or as late as mid-January,” the Times reported.
The outlet said the former Secret Service special agent has already begun sending office “knick-knacks” and other personal items back to Florida, where he intends to return to pro-Trump broadcasting ahead of the 2026 midterms.
It was reported by former Politico journalist Rachael Bade last week that Bongino was to be Trump’s “fall-guy” over Epstein, although the FBI denied this to be the case to the Daily Beast in the strongest terms.
Trump-friendly outlet Fox News, citing sources, has disputed that Bongino’s office is already empty, but conceded that his imminent departure is a “possibility.”
Bongino, 51—a longtime Trump loyalist who took the job in February—has publicly acknowledged the tension between his prior media role and his FBI position.
He built a MAGA following by stoking suspicions of a cover-up and demanding the government release everything on Trump’s former friend, the late pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. The president denies any wrongdoing related to Epstein, who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges, but his links continue to haunt him.
After Bongino took office as FBI deputy director on March 17, 2025, he angered MAGA by pivoting to a more cautious line—framing delays as necessary to protect victims—just as the administration’s transparency promises unraveled.
In July, after a DOJ-FBI memo said there was no “client list” and reaffirmed Epstein’s suicide, Bongino reportedly skipped work and issued an ultimatum in a clash with Attorney General Pam Bondi: “She goes, or I go.”
FBI sources told the Beast earlier this month that Bongino had always been due to be on paid leave, although when he returned, his public posture appeared to become defensive.
Bloomberg’s FOIA Files then supplied the documents behind the drama. Emails obtained by the outlet showed the FBI’s “Special Redaction Project,” including crash-course training for about 1,000 agents at the Central Records Complex in Winchester, Virginia, and $851,344 in overtime between March 17 and March 22.
A March 18 email chain forwarded to Bongino with redaction “guidance” prompted him to insist on X earlier this month that he had requested the earlier correspondence to see what had been done before he started.
In appearence on Fox News days later, he told host Sean Hannity: “I was paid in the past, Sean, for my opinions, that’s clear, and one day I will be back in that space—but that’s not what I’m paid for now,” adding: “I’m paid to be your deputy director, and we base investigations on facts.”
Bongino has also upset colleagues. Earlier this month, a group of anonymous agents leaked a dossier listing the failings of Bongino and his boss, Director Kash Patel, while calling on them to go.
His possible exit comes as Patel, 45, also faces intensifying scrutiny over his ongoing habit of broadcasting investigative updates online.
Just this week, during the manhunt after a Brown University classroom shooting that killed two people and injured nine, he posted about a “person of interest” who was later released.
Representative Seth Magaziner, a Rhode Island Democrat, said Patel should “take a lesson” from local officials and “not jump the gun,” according to The Providence Journal.
It is just the latest in a long line of embarrassing flubs that have seen Patel win the nickname ‘Keystone Kash.’
The Daily Beast has contacted the FBI for comment.
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