What Dan Bongino Has Said About The FBI

Dan Bongino, President Donald Trump’s pick for deputy director of the FBI, has shared conspiracies about the bureau with his millions of podcast listeners, speculatively claiming it is behind a “massive” Jan. 6 “cover-up.”

The former U.S. Secret Service Agent and Fox News host accepted the offer from President Trump on Monday this week. His podcast, The Dan Bongino Show, is the 56th most popular podcast on Spotify and has welcomed Trump as a repeat guest.

He will join the newly-appointed bureau director Kash Patel, the latest in a series of loyalist picks that have attracted backlash.

“Every single DNA cell in my body is going to be dedicated toward keeping this homeland safe,” Bongino said in response, adding “We’re going to reestablish faith in this institution.”

However, Bongino has not only been a sharp critic of the bureau calling it, “irredeemably corrupt,” he has also spread a conspiracy theory that the bureau is behind a “massive cover-up” surrounding the discovery of pipe bombs found near Republican and Democratic Party offices on Jan. 6, 2021.

With Bongino now an important cog in the bureau’s management, Newsweek has examined his accusations about the agency he has been instructed to help lead.

The Pipe Bomb Investigation: What We Know

On January 5, 2021, pipe bombs were placed near the offices of the Republican National Committee (RNC) and Democratic National Committee (DNC) ahead of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

“The unknown individual wore a face mask, glasses, gloves, a gray hooded sweatshirt, and black and light gray Nike Air Max Speed Turf shoes with a yellow logo. The individual carried a ​backpack,” the FBI states.

“Some of the components of the devices include: 1×8-inch threaded galvanized pipes, end caps, kitchen timers, wires, metal clips and homemade black powder.”

The bombs were discovered the next day on Jan. 6, 2021.

In the four years since, the FBI says it has not yet found a clear link between the bombs and the riot and has not established if the suspect is a man or a woman, or what the suspect’s motive was. It says it has assessed 600 tips, 39,000 video files, and conducted more than 1,000 interviews.

“Without being able to confirm the suspect’s identity, it is very hard to definitively establish motive,” David Sundberg, assistant director in charge of the bureau’s Washington field office told The Associated Press in January 2025.

“Therefore, it would be difficult for us to state that there is a link, although we can’t state there is not one.”

The FBI, which is offering a reward of up to $500,000 for information, released new footage in January 2025 that showed a figure in a gray hoody placing one of the bombs at the DNC.

What Has Bongino Said?

Bongino has poured water on the FBI’s handling of the investigation and dedicated multiple episodes of The Dan Bongino Show to probing it, and criticism.

However, while there has been an outcry about the investigation, some of Bongino’s commentary has ventured into speculation and conspiracy.

Bongino has said he believes the bombs were “planted there on purpose by people looking to frame Trump supporters” to stop objections to the certification of the 2020 presidential election. He has claimed that a whistleblower has told him their belief that the person was a “government contractor.”

“They didn’t want people talking about voter fraud problems so they needed this,” Bongino said in August, 2024.

He has theorized that the FBI has held back releasing footage of the suspect because it would inspire “conservative media” to uncover that the suspect “was working with the anti-Trump crowd.” Bongino has falsely said elsewhere that Trump won the last three presidential elections.

Bongino has shared some of this conspiracy directly with Trump, telling him during an interview on his podcast that the FBI was “continuing to manipulate the public about this case” and that “they may know the identity of this person, they just don’t want you to know,” calling it a “massive cover-up.”

However, these allegations of a “cover-up” are speculative, feeding into a conspiracy theory that the pipe bomb discovery was part of a plot to divert law enforcement from the Capitol on January 6.

Bongino is not the only public figure who has scrutinized the investigation. Earlier this month Republican representatives Thomas Massie and Barry Loudermilk released a report probing lines of investigation the FBI had followed and whether law enforcement followed safety protocols once the bombs were discovered.

However, Bongino’s claims that the pipe bombs were part of a plot either intended to influence the events of Jan. 6 or was otherwise managed by anti-Trump personnel is not merited and entirely speculative. While Bongino claims to have spoken to whistleblowers, who also allege a government-backed plot, there is no other merit or reasonable grounds to assume these rumors are accurate.

Trump who has encouraged misleading narratives about the events of Jan. 6, has humored Bongino’s interpretation claiming on The Dan Bongino Show in January 2025 that he could find out who the suspect was. Bongino requested that Trump, Pam Bondi, and Kash Patel “have the FBI open the books.”

Much of Bongino’s reporting about the pipe bomb investigation has relied on claims made by conservative conspiracy theorist Darren Beattie, a former Trump speechwriter who was fired in 2018 after CNN revealed he had spoken at a conference attended by white nationalists. Beattie has since been appointed by the Trump administration for a top role at the State Department. Newsweek has contacted representatives for Bongino, the White House, and the FBI via email for comment.

Other Conspiratorial And Misleading Claims

Bongino has said undercover FBI agents were in the crowd on January 6. A Justice Department report released in December said that while there were FBI informants in Washington, D.C, no full-time undercover agents were present. Informants were not authorized to enter the Capitol or join the riot, but four did enter the building, the BBC reported in December 2024.

He also shared clips from Kash Patel’s senatorial confirmation hearings in which Patel claimed that Trump authorized 20,000 National Guardsman “to secure any security measures necessary related to the Capitol” ahead of January 6.

There is no evidence that Trump authorized 20,000 National Guard to the Capitol. Patel repeated the claim to a Colorado court hearing related to Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results; the court judge said Patel was “not a credible witness” and that his testimony was “not only illogical (because Trump only had authority over about 2,000 National Guardsmen) but completely devoid of any evidence in the record.”

While Bongino has previously attempted to avoid saying unequivocally that the results of the 2020 election were fraudulent, he told his podcast audience in January 2025: “We won the last 3 elections,” referring to Trump’s three presidential election runs.

“We’re good at that, we’re good at flipping the script on d******, f***** liberal commies ‘cos we beat their a****,” Bongino said.

“We’ve won the last three elections. ‘I thought just two?’ We won three.”

In the same episode, Bongino also said that Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records was a “fake crime.” He has said elsewhere: “It is a fake case, with fake charges, with a fake justice system,” calling it “b******”, claiming that Trump was a “victim of the deep state.”

If you have any information concerning the incidents described in this article, please contact the FBI’s toll-free tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324), or submit tips online at tips.fbi.gov.

You may also contact your local FBI office or the nearest American Embassy or Consulate. Tips may remain anonymous.