Conservative political commentator Dan Bongino has apparently lost faith in his former law enforcement colleagues following the FBI’s raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. .
Mr Bongino, 47, has a long career in law enforcement. Born in Queens, he served as a member of the New York City Police Department in the late 1990s prior to a long stint as a Secret Service agent that ended in 2011. But he was left irate yesterday after the FBI executed a search warrant at Mr Trump’s home.
“You woke up in a different United States today,” Mr Bongino said in an appearance on the television programme Fox & Friends. “And to all the goons and media hacks and moonbats and lunatics on the left, you better be really careful laughing about this. That Lord Acton was correct: that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Mr Bongino then shared his vision of a resurgent Mr Trump clearing out the bureau.
“When President Trump hopefully runs again and takes the White House, every single person at the top of the DOJ and the FBI who cannot raise their right hand and pledge allegiance to the Constitution, not to a political party, needs to be fired yesterday!” Mr Bongino said. “And then when the Left starts whining and the media, fire 100 more the next day. Do not even let them breathe! Everyone has to go! You do not live in a constitutional republic. ”
After a question from programme host Ainsley Earhardt about what federal investigators were looking for at Mar-a-Lago when they executed their search warrant, Mr Bongino suggested that the FBI should have instead have worked out a deal with Mr Trump’s legal team to get whatever documents they ultimately seized.
“I’m telling as a former federal agent who has investigated, gosh, I don’t know, a hundred-plus big federal cases: you don’t just show up at the house with a warrant for someone of this political stature,” Mr Bongino said.
Mr Bongino, who ran unsuccessfully for elected office in Maryland multiple times over the last decade, is not the only promiment figure on the far right who has turned on the FBI in the aftermath of the raid.
Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a staunch supporter of Mr Trump, called for the FBI to be defunded shortly after tweeting a picture of the American flag upside down.
Rep Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House Leader, tweeted “perserve your documents and clear your calendar” at Attorney General Merrick Garland, promising that the Republicans would launch an investigation into the Department of Justice should they retake the House of Representatives in November.
Sen Marco Rubio of Florida suggested that the US is in jeopardy of becoming “Nicaragua under [President Daniel] Ortega,” writing in a separate tweet that “Using government power to persecute political opponents is something we have seen many times from 3rd world Marxist dictatorships... But never before in America[.]”
The raid on Mr Trump’s residence does not appear to have been a strictly partisan endeavour. While Mr Garland is a Biden appointee — the same man Seante Republicans blocked from confirmation to the Supreme Court during Barack Obama’s presidency in 2016 — the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, is a Republican who was appointed by Mr Trump.
