President Donald Trump on February 28, 2025

One recent surprise appointment of a co-deputy director at the FBI suggests that President Donald Trump could be preparing to fire one of his most controversial picks at the bureau.

That's according to several law enforcement sources — including a former senior FBI official — who confided to NBC News on Tuesday that current FBI deputy director Dan Bongino may be headed for the exits. Those sources, who spoke to the outlet anonymously, said that Missouri Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey's recent appointment to serve alongside Bongino in a position that had been created just for him showed it was "clear as day" that Bongino's firing was looming in the near future. Bongino has previously complained about the long hours involved with being the #2 official at the FBI, adding that the job has taken him away from his family.

"All the retired people think it shows Bongino [could be fired]," the former top FBI official said.

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Bailey is viewed as a staunch Trump loyalist who used his time as Missouri's top law enforcement official to hound Democrats. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote in a July editorial that Bailey also "improperly inserted his office into various national culture-war controversies."

"For more than two years now, the state’s top lawyer has routinely used that perch to pursue frivolous and often deranged legal action designed to inflame his MAGA base," the editorial read.

In a statement to NBC News, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) who is the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sounded the alarm over Bailey's appointment. He warned that "a partisan politician" was about to take the reins of the FBI amid Trump's open campaign of retribution against his political enemies.

"Mr. Bailey is another Trump loyalist who has continuously peddled the ‘Big Lie,’ that the 2020 election was stolen," Durbin told the network. “This appointment further proves President Trump will stop at nothing to politicize and weaponize the federal government’s most prestigious and powerful law-enforcement agency to protect his allies and punish his critics."

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Click here to read NBC's report in its entirety.