Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey will serve as the FBI’s co-deputy director, alongside the law enforcement agency’s current second-in-command, Dan Bongino.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed the news on X, saying Bailey “took on the swamp, fought weaponized government, and defended the Constitution” as Missouri’s top law enforcement official. Bailey will resign from his current job on Sept. 8, he said in a statement.
“My life has been defined by a call to service, and I am once again answering that call, this time at the national level,” Bailey wrote.
Bongino welcomed Bailey to the agency in an X post.
“Let’s get after it,” FBI Director Kash Patel wrote in response to Bongino.
FOX News Digital was first to report Bailey’s appointment.
In the past, the FBI deputy director has typically been a career staffer at the bureau. Neither of the Trump administration’s deputy leaders had a history with the FBI prior to their appointments: Bailey served in the Army and worked as a state prosecutor in Missouri for much of his career, and Bongino was a Secret Service agent before working as a media personality.
Bailey has served as Missouri’s attorney general since 2023. He’s known for asking the Supreme Court to intervene on Missouri’s behalf in a criminal case against President Trump brought by New York prosecutors — a longshot request that was rejected by the high court. He’s also defended his state’s restrictions on abortion and gender-affirming care for minors, and sued Starbucks over its diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
A Trump loyalist, Bongino clashed with some other administration officials last month amid controversy over the FBI and Justice Department’s handling of a review of the Jeffrey Epstein case. The deputy FBI director didn’t show up to work at the department at one point, and weighed resigning from his role, sources told CBS News at the time.
A source familiar with the matter said at the time that Mr. Trump hadn’t lost confidence in Bongino, but there was some frustration at the White House about the deputy director.
“Any attempt to sow division within this team is baseless and distracts from the real progress being made in restoring public safety and pursuing justice for all,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said last month.
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