WASHINGTON >> Dan Bongino, a former New York City police officer and Secret Service agent turned right-wing pundit and podcaster, will be the next deputy director of the FBI, President Donald Trump said Sunday night.

Trump, making the announcement on his social media site, said newly installed FBI Director Kash Patel had named Bongino to the No. 2 post at the country’s most powerful law enforcement agency. The role of deputy director does not require Senate confirmation, meaning two steadfast Trump loyalists will effectively be at the uppermost reaches of an agency known for its tradition of independence.

The announcement came about an hour after the FBI Agents Association told its members that Patel had privately acknowledged that the next deputy director should be an FBI agent. The apparent disconnect in selecting Bongino has intensified mistrust among the rank and file.

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.

Bongino, in a statement posted on social media today, praised FBI staff members as “dedicated people” who “deserve leadership that will back them up, protect their mission and ensure they can do their jobs.”

He added: “I’m here to work. I’m here to lead. And I’m here to ensure that America’s law enforcement institutions uphold the values and integrity they were built upon.”

In the past, FBI directors have selected senior agents with extensive experience to essentially run the bureau’s operations, a complex and grueling job that requires working closely with foreign partners and navigating sensitive investigations.

The choice of Bongino is a radical and abrupt departure from that practice and raises startling questions about how two people who have never served as FBI agents will oversee the vast surveillance and investigative powers of an agency of 38,000 people and a budget of about $11 billion.

The combination of Patel and Bongino will represent the least experienced leadership pair in the bureau’s history. It is also all but certain to prompt concerns about how the men, who have freely peddled misinformation and embraced partisan politics, will run an agency typically insulated from White House interference.

“My entire life right now is about owning the libs,” Bongino said in 2018. He has also echoed a popular grievance among the far right denouncing the so-called deep state.

Bongino’s ascension comes at a time of enormous upheaval at the agency as the Justice Department has pushed out some senior executives who, collectively, have decades of experience running the different divisions of the bureau.

It is unclear what will happen to the interim leaders, Brian Driscoll and Robert C. Kissane, who served as the acting director and acting deputy director until Patel’s confirmation. Their initial refusal to accede to the Justice Department’s demand for the names of bureau personnel who investigated the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, made them well liked internally, willing, in the view of many inside the bureau, to stand up to what was perceived as political interference.

Many had hoped the two would remain in Washington to help Patel run the FBI.

In an internal newsletter distributed to agents before Trump’s announcement, the head of the agents association, Natalie Bara, said that in a meeting with Patel last month, she and the group’s vice president, Jen Morrow, had urged that his lieutenant “be an onboard, active special agent, as has been the case for 117 years for many compelling reasons.”

Patel, she said, had agreed.

Patel had wanted Bongino as his deputy, a person familiar with the matter said, though it remained unclear whether Trump had also pushed for Bongino’s selection.

Bongino ran for elected office three times before gaining popularity as a right-wing commentator.

A former Fox News host, Bongino left the network in 2023. Notably, he hosted Trump on his show in 2021, at a time when the network — and much of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire — was trying to turn the page on the Trump era.

On Fox News in December 2021, Geraldo Rivera called the events of Jan. 6 a riot “unleashed, incited and inspired” by Trump, leading Bongino to question his fealty. “The backstabbing of the president you’re engaging in is really disgusting,” he said.

His tough-talking style catapulted him to stardom on radio and on social media, where he often peddles rampant misinformation. That includes spreading the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen, falsely claiming that masks are ineffective at preventing the spread of the coronavirus, and perpetuating labyrinthine and baseless conspiracy theories involving a plot by Democrats to spy on Trump’s 2016 campaign.

In an interview with The New Yorker, Pete Hegseth, then a fellow Fox News host and now the defense secretary, equated Bongino to a general who, like him, got “to serve in information warfare.”

The news elicited questions about how the bureau would retain its credibility with two leaders who have a penchant for exaggeration.

In an email to the FBI after he was confirmed, Patel said, “I will always have your backs, because you have the backs of the American people.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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