Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino to decide about future at bureau in coming weeks, sources say

Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino will make a decision about his future at the bureau within the next few weeks, two sources familiar with his considerations tell Fox News.

The sources deny recent reports that Bongino's office at the FBI is empty, but they say his departure is a possibility in the near future. 

A source familiar with the situation told Fox News Digital that Bongino has not made any decisions about his future.

BONGINO ANNOUNCES FBI APPREHENDED 449 CHILD PREDATORS, RESCUED 224 KIDS IN FIRST 3 MONTHS AS DEPUTY DIRECTOR

Bongino's tenure at the FBI has come under fire in recent weeks, alongside FBI Director Kash Patel. Earlier this month, a blistering report from an alliance of active-duty and retired FBI personnel portrayed the bureau as directionless under its new leadership.

Bongino and Patel pushed back on the report, however, defending sweeping reforms they say have delivered major gains in accountability and public safety.

INSIDE DAN BONGINO'S TENSE MEETING WITH WHITE HOUSE OFFICIALS OVER JEFFREY EPSTEIN FALLOUT

"When the director and I moved forward with these reforms, we expected some noise from the small circle of disgruntled former agents still loyal to the old Comey–Wray model," Bongino told Fox News at the time.

"That was never our audience. Our responsibility is to the American people. And under the new leadership team, the bureau is delivering results this country hasn't seen in decades — tighter accountability, tougher performance standards, billions saved and a mission-first culture. That's how you restore trust."

New York Post columnist and Fox News contributor Miranda Devine said last week that an internal 115-page report from FBI active-duty and retired agents and analysts heavily criticized Patel and Bongino since they took on their respective jobs earlier this year.

The alliance criticized Patel as "in over his head" and Bongino as "something of a clown," according to The New York Post.

The outlet said the 115-page assessment was written in the style of an FBI intelligence product and analyzed reports from 24 FBI sources and sub-sources who described their experiences inside the bureau.

Devine said Patel was described by multiple internal sources as inexperienced, with one source saying he "has neither the breadth of experience nor the bearing an FBI director needs to be successful."

Patel told Fox News Digital the FBI is "operating exactly as the country expects."

Fox News' Ashley Carnahan contributed to this report.

One chart lays bare the sprawling fraud network Minnesota officials missed

What had been a modest stream of taxpayer dollars to Feeding Our Future suddenly became a flood, surging 2,800% in a year, an abrupt spike now at the center of mounting scrutiny and oversight concerns.

The explosive growth occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the organization exploited a federally funded children’s nutrition program run by the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), siphoning off money intended to feed low-income kids. It now stands as the nation's largest COVID-19 fraud case.

MINNESOTA’S ANTI-FRAUD SPENDING HAS QUIETLY BALLOONED, LEAVING TAXPAYERS TO PAY FOR FAILURE TWICE

Data from the Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor sheds light on how the scheme went unchecked for so long, finding that the MDE oversight was "inadequate" and that its failures "created opportunities for fraud."

State records chart the rise in payments and reveal how the fraud ballooned in plain sight.

According to data from the state audit, payments to Feeding Our Future began in 2019 at $1.4 million. That figure rose to $4.8 million the following year before topping out at $140.3 million in 2021, a staggering 2,818% increase.

Even before the pandemic, Feeding Our Future was already an outlier. 

READ ADDITIONAL FOX NEWS COVERAGE OF THE MINNESOTA FRAUD EXPOSE

By the end of 2019, it sponsored more than six times the number of Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) sites as its peers.

When federal nutrition dollars surged during COVID-19, that gap only widened. While funding to all meal sponsors increased, Feeding Our Future’s growth far outpaced the rest of the system. 

According to the legislative auditor, in 2021, nearly four out of every 10 dollars sent to nonprofit meal sponsors in Minnesota flowed to Feeding Our Future alone.

Taken together, the numbers show that Feeding Our Future was expanding faster, adding more sites and collecting a vastly larger share of federal meal funds than any comparable organization, long before state regulators intervened.

And the oversight failures were just as striking.

Flawed applications sailed through, complaints were never investigated, and the nonprofit kept expanding despite repeated red flags.

What's more, in the wake of a years-long $250 million welfare fraud scheme, Minnesota taxpayers will now finance a pricey state-level cleanup effort, effectively paying for the failure twice after state officials missed warnings.

Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota has said in the past that he is ultimately accountable for the fraud that took place under his administration.

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