FBI Deputy Director Bongino repeatedly said pipe bombs planted ahead of Jan. 6 were ‘inside job’

(CNN) — Dan Bongino, the incoming deputy director of the FBI, suggested on his popular podcast in January that the agency he is now about to help lead was complicit in planting pipe bombs around Washington ahead of the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

“I believe the FBI knows the identity of this pipe bomber on January 6th, four years ago, and just doesn’t wanna tell us ‘cause it was an inside job,” Bongino said on his podcast.

“Folks, this guy was an insider,” he added. “This was an inside job. And it is the biggest scandal in FBI history.”

A former Secret Service agent and NYPD cop, Bongino has become a successful conservative media personality in part by spreading conspiracy theories about the so-called deep state that alleges federal workers are plotting to undermine the president’s agenda.

The FBI is a frequent target of his ire.

Bongino has called the bureau “corrupt” and even suggested it doctored surveillance footage of the pipe bomb suspect, suggesting the bomb was planted by law enforcement to create a narrative that Trump supporters were trying to assassinate then-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

“I’ve told you this many times,” he added on the January show. “The person who planted that bomb was definitely an insider. It was not an anti-Trump person. It was someone planting a bomb to create a narrative that crazy MAGA people are trying to assassinate Kamala Harris.”

The unsolved case of who planted two pipe bombs the night before the riot, one near the Democratic National Committee and the other near the Republican National Committee, has fueled a wide range of conspiracy theories, many of which have been fodder for Bongino’s successful podcast.

A Department of Homeland Security watchdog report published in 2024 detailed how close Harris came to the “viable” pipe bomb placed near the DNC that day.

The Dan Bongino Show is consistently one of the most popular podcasts on the Apple Podcast charts.

In response to a request for comment from Bongino, a White House spokesperson praised him to CNN.

“President Trump brilliantly selected Dan Bongino—a highly-qualified former NYPD police officer and U.S. Secret Service agent—as the next Deputy Director of the FBI,” the spokesperson said. “As President Trump said, Bongino will work alongside Director Kash Patel to bring law and order, fairness, and justice back to America, and his willingness to give up his wildly popular podcast shows his dedication to serving our country.”

A FBI spokesperson told CNN, “The FBI does not have any comment.”

Bongino did not respond to a CNN inquiry.

Kash Patel, the newly-confirmed FBI director, has also raised conspiracy theories about the pipe bomb, including in January, on a conservative podcast.

Together, Patel and Bongino, two of MAGA world’s most well-known figures, will help President Donald Trump remake the FBI amid his long-standing grievances with the bureau stretching back to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

A CNN KFile review of Bongino’s social media account on X found that he first began to sour on the FBI in May 2017 after a special counsel was appointed to take over the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation, accusing the “deep state” of trying to undermine Trump. He has since published multiple books alleging an anti-Trump cabal trying to sabotage the president.

CNN also found that Bongino deleted numerous tweets, including one from the day of the Capitol riot that attacked then-Rep. Liz Cheney for saying the states had to uphold the Constitution and certify the results.

“What happens when states violate the Constitution? Does a ‘Constitution’ serve a purpose if it only binds parties that believe it’s a Constitution?” Bongino wrote.

Bongino also deleted tweets that refer to the “deep state,” including one in which he wrote, “The Deep State is determined to have Trump’s scalp.” It is unclear when the tweets were deleted or why.

Bongino routinely doubled down on conspiratorial rhetoric regarding the FBI, adding that if declassified information confirmed the pipe bomb was an inside job, the FBI would deploy another cover-up of a training exercise gone wrong.

“They’re going to say it was a training exercise. We put these training bombs down there because we weren’t sure the security around Kamala Harris and Joe Biden on January 6th was gonna be any good. We put these training devices to test everyone,” Bongino said. “No, this was not a training. This was an effort to frame MAGA people.”

CNN’s Winter Hawk contributed to this story.

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