Dan Bongino

Daniel John Bongino (born December 4, 1974) is an American conservative political commentator, radio show host, author, and former law enforcement officer.

In 1992 he graduated from the private Catholic all-male high school, Archbishop Molloy, in Jamaica, Queens.

He attended Queens College, where he earned both a bachelor's and master's degree in psychology, and Pennsylvania State University, where he earned a Master of Business Administration.

In his early career, from 1995 to 1999, he served as a New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer.

Bongino worked as a police officer for the New York City Police Department from 1995 to 1999.

Next he served as a US Secret Service agent from 1999 to 2011.

Bongino ran three times for Congress as a Republican; he was defeated each time.

He serves as a host of The Dan Bongino Show on Rumble.

He served as host of the Unfiltered with Dan Bongino on Fox News until April 2023.

Bongino was born and raised in Queens, New York City.

Bongino joined the United States Secret Service in 1999 as a special agent.

In 2002 he left the New York Field Office to become an instructor at the Secret Service Training Academy in Beltsville, Maryland.

In 2006, he was assigned to the Presidential Protection Division during George W. Bush's second term.

He remained on protective duty after Barack Obama became president, leaving in May 2011 to run for the U.S. Senate.

Also in 2011, The Baltimore Sun reported that Bongino was the lead investigator of a car rental fraud scheme.

His work contributed to two people being indicted on federal wire fraud charges.

In 2012 Bongino ran a campaign for a U.S. Senate seat for Maryland.

A year later, he published a memoir, Life Inside the Bubble (2013), about his career as a Secret Service agent and political campaign.

The book addresses his experiences protecting presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, investigating federal crimes, and mounting a campaign for US Senate.

Bongino was criticized by former colleagues at the Secret Service for using his Secret Service background as part of his run for political office and for his claim of having secret information based on conversations he overheard in the Obama White House.

A former colleague criticized him for trying to use his proximity to President Barack Obama in his political career: "He's trying to draw attention to himself and he's hijacking the Secret Service brand. That's all he's got going for him."

Bongino said he had access to "high-level discussions" in the White House.

Unnamed former colleagues say Bongino "tends to exaggerate his importance on the presidential detail and exaggerate his proximity" and that "We don't sit in on meetings at the White House. We don't sit in on high-level meetings."

In response to the criticism from an anonymous former colleague, Bongino said, "There's nothing confidential in the book" and "It's not a tell-all. It's my tale of the Secret Service."

He rejected Birtherism, the claim that President Obama was born outside the United States.

In January 2016, he published a second book, The Fight: A Secret Service Agent's Inside Account of Security Failings and the Political Machine.

Bongino has been a radio host and commentator on local and national radio programs.

He has been a guest host for both the Sean Hannity and Mark Levin radio shows, and sometimes fills in on WMAL-FM talk radio in Washington, D.C. and WBAL in Baltimore.

Bongino is a proponent of Spygate, a conspiracy theory alleging illegal spying on Donald Trump's 2016 campaign was perpetrated by Barack Obama's administration.

He was a paid contributor to NRATV until December 2018.

He has frequently appeared on Fox News' opinion programming and on the conspiracy theory website InfoWars.

He guest hosted Hannity's Fox News show in December 2018.

He wrote a book on the subject titled Spygate: The Attempted Sabotage of Donald J. Trump (2019).

In December 2019, Bongino launched the website Bongino Report as an alternative to the conservative Drudge Report website.

Prior to the site's launch, he criticized Drudge Report founder Matt Drudge for having "abandoned" Trump supporters.

Politico reported in October 2020 that Bongino's posts on Facebook were routinely among the most shared on the platform.

In November 2020, The New York Times listed Dan Bongino as one of its top five election "misinformation superspreaders".

In the wake of the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021, Bongino's Twitter account was temporarily shut down on January 7, 2021, for violating Twitter's Civic Integrity policy.

In March 2021, Cumulus Media signed Bongino to replace The Rush Limbaugh Show on its talk radio stations.

Cumulus already carried Bongino's existing one-hour podcast.