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WASHINGTON – Dan Bongino, the deputy director of the FBI, admitted Thursday his past support for a Jan. 6 conspiracy theory was motivated by money.
In recent years, Bongino repeatedly said on his podcast that the pipe bombs discovered near the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which did not explode, were some sort of “inside job,” the work of a government official out to get President Donald Trump and his supporters.
Of the pipe bomber, Bongino said just this January: “This was an inside job. And it is the biggest scandal in FBI history.”
In an interview on Fox News this week, host Sean Hannity confronted Bongino about his past statements in light of Bongino’s FBI having finally identified a suspect in the case, a 30-year-old Virginia man with apparently no connection to the government.
“Listen, I was paid in the past, Sean, for my opinions, that’s clear, and one day, I’ll be back in that space,” Bongino said. “But that’s not what I’m paid for now. I’m paid to be your deputy director, and we base investigations on facts.”
It was a stunning admission from a prominent voice in the right-wing media ecosystem — someone who held himself out as unafraid to tell truths the mainstream media and the government wanted to hide — that he wasn’t bothering to base any of it in fact.
It’s not the first time this year that Bongino and other prominent MAGA voices have walked back statements they made before becoming part of the second Trump administration. Earlier this year, the Justice Department announced that contrary to claims made by Bongino, FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi in their pre-government roles, the government isn’t hiding a list of sex predator Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophile clients. But Bongino is the first one to come out and say he was just getting paid.
Bongino had claimed the pipe bomber wanted to help Democrats by disrupting Republican objections to the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. The plan went awry, Bongino said, after a violent mob of Trump supporters disrupted the proceedings. But it was still the biggest scandal in history, he said, because the FBI knew the bomber’s identity and was protecting him.
“It is a Democrat insider or an anti-Trump lunatic who was trying to stop on Jan. 6, four years ago, the Republicans from objecting to the election,” Bongino said on his podcast. “So they figured if they planted a bomb there that they could rush into the Capitol and go, ‘Stop the objections! Kamala Harris was almost killed by you!’”
The FBI now alleges the pipe bombs were left outside Democratic and Republican national committee headquarters buildings by Brian J. Cole Jr., a 30-year-old who reportedly told investigators he believed the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump. If that’s true, it’s possible he had the same motives as hundreds of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol that day, namely that the 2020 election had been rigged in Biden’s favor.
The Blaze, a right-wing media site, retracted a November story that named a former Capitol Police officer as the pipe bomber based on “gait analysis.”
Other proponents of pipe bomb conspiracy theories quickly adjusted to the news without admitting any error. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who has said multiple federal agencies are implicated in the planting of the bombs, suggested the FBI’s failure to find Cole for five years is suspicious and that it would be “very suspect” if authorities claim Cole had no accomplices. The right-wing commentator Julie Kelly, a frequent guest on Bongino’s podcast, said it’s possible the FBI previously held off on arresting Cole because he’s Black.
On Friday morning, Bongino cheered himself by posting a quote from former President Theodore Roosevelt dismissing those criticizing from the sidelines.
“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,” the quote goes, concluding that “if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
English (US) ·