Dan Bongino on “FOX & Friends” in 2019. Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
By Louis Keene
February 24, 2025
Dan Bongino, the conservative ex-Fox News host President Trump appointed deputy director of the FBI, has made numerous trips to Israel — and shares a right-wing focus on Jewish liberal philanthropist George Soros.
Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who became one of the country’s most popular right-wing podcasters, will serve under newly confirmed FBI director Kash Patel in a role that has been typically reserved for veterans of the agency. Bongino, like Patel, has downplayed the Jan. 6 insurrection, saying prison sentences for Capitol rioters were “clearly an overreach.”
On his social media accounts and on his nationally syndicated talk show, The Dan Bongino Show, Bongino regularly assails the so-called “deep state” — a theoretical secret network of government employees working together to thwart official powerholders, the subject of a conspiracy theory since Trump’s first presidency — and often accuses Soros of funding it. He has posted dozens of times about Soros since 2022.
Soros, a billionaire investor whose foundation supports liberal causes, including emerging democracies around the world, is a frequent object of conspiracy theories. The Anti-Defamation League says Soros conspiracy theories are “a gateway to antisemitism.”
Bongino has dismissed this criticism in part by saying, in April 2023, “Whenever they throw out the ‘anti-Semitic’ conspiracy theory it tells you that they’re worried about what Soros is up to. It means double down on your reporting on this major scandal.”
He later added, “Any criticism of me from this point forward will be deemed ‘anti-Christian.’ Not because I believe this, but because our goon media has gone on the record stating these are the new rules. New rules are in effect.”
Bongino’s support of Israel is sometimes couched in explicitly right-wing terms. A few days after the Oct. 7 attack, Bongino wrote, “If the communist media were nearly as concerned with bloodlust Jew hatred, as they are about Islamophobia, the world would be a far different place.”
As second-in-command at an agency focused on domestic crime, Bongino would likely have little influence on foreign policy. But the FBI does have agents in Israel, and collaborates with the Mossad, Shin Bet (Israel’s equivalent of the FBI), and the Israeli National Police.
The FBI has also opened cases involving crimes against Americans by members of Hamas on Oct. 7, eventually leading to terrorism charges against six Hamas leaders, including Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar.
However, the Justice Department is now scrutinizing the FBI teams that backed those charges. The new deputy head of Justice has requested a list of personnel who participated in the Jan. 6 investigation and in the investigation into the Hamas case. A Justice Department official accused the FBI of “resisting efforts to progress” the Hamas investigation.
Bongino’s firm support of Israel and open contempt for pro-Palestinian protesters could also accelerate the FBI’s involvement on American college campuses. Christopher Wray, who served as FBI Director under former President Biden, said last year that the agency did not monitor campus protests, but that it shared information with schools about specific threats of violence. Bongino has blamed Soros for financing the campus protests.
The Justice Department, led by Pam Bondi since earlier this month, is now actively engaged in combatting antisemitism on campus. An executive order signed by President Trump last month directed federal agencies to tell universities to “monitor” and “report activities” by foreign students, staff and faculty related to antisemitism.
A separate White House fact sheet indicated that “immediate action will be taken by the Department of Justice to protect law and order, quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation, and investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.”
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