By ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON and ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Dan Bongino, a former U.S. Secret Service agent who has penned best-selling books, ran unsuccessfully for office and gained fame as a conservative pundit with TV shows and a popular podcast, has been chosen to serve as FBI deputy director.

President Donald Trump announced the appointment Sunday night in a post on his Truth Social platform, praising Bongino as “a man of incredible love and passion for our Country.” He called the announcement “great news for Law Enforcement and American Justice.”

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The selection places two staunch Trump allies atop the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency at a time when Democrats are concerned that the president could seek to target his adversaries. Bongino would serve under Kash Patel, who was sworn in as FBI director at the White House on Friday and who has signaled his intent to reshape the bureau, including by relocating hundreds of employees from its Washington headquarters and placing greater emphasis on the FBI’s traditional crime-fighting duties.

The deputy director serves as the FBI’s second-in-command and is traditionally a career agent responsible for the bureau’s day-to-day law enforcement operations. Bongino, like Patel, has never served in the FBI, raising questions about their experience level when the U.S. is facing escalating national security threats.

The two are inheriting an FBI gripped by turmoil as the Justice Department over the past month has forced out a group of senior bureau officials and made a highly unusual demand for the names of thousands of agents who participated in investigations related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Bongino served on the presidential details for then-Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, before becoming a popular right-wing figure. He became one of the leading personalities in the Make America Great Again political movement to spread false information about the 2020 election, which Trump and allies have continued to maintain was marred by widespread false even though such claims have been widely rejected as false by judges and former Trump attorney general William Barr.

For a few years following Rush Limbaugh’s death in 2021, he was chosen for a radio show on the same time slot of the famous commentator.

Bongino worked for the New York Police Department for several years in the 1990s before joining the Secret Service. He began doing commentary on Fox News more than a decade ago, and had a Saturday night show with the network from 2021 to 2023. He is now a host of The Dan Bongino Show, one of the most popular podcasts, according to Spotify.

Bongino ran for a U.S. Senate seat in Maryland in 2012 and for congressional seats in 2014 and 2016 in Maryland and Florida, after moving in 2015. He lost the three races.

During an interview last fall, Bongino asked Trump to commit to forming a commission to reform the Secret Service, calling it a “failed” agency and criticizing it for the two assassination attempts last year.

“That guy should have been nowhere near you,” Bongino said about the man who authorities say camped outside Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, before he was spotted with a rifle.

During the same interview, Trump praised the Secret Service agent who saw the rifle’s barrel coming out of a bush.

Patel and Bongino will succeed the two acting FBI leaders, Brian Driscoll and Robert Kissane, who have led the bureau since the departure in January of former Director Christopher Wray, who was appointed by Trump in 2017 and held the job for the next seven years before resigning at the end of the Biden administration to make way for his chosen success.

Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.

By MATTHEW LEE and AAMER MADHANI, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump holds talks this week with French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at a moment of deep uncertainty about the future of transatlantic relations, with Trump transforming American foreign policy and effectively tuning out European leadership as he looks to quickly end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

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Trump also has made demands for territory — Greenland, Canada, Gaza and the Panama Canal — as well as precious rare earth minerals from Ukraine. Just over a month into his second term, the “America First ” president has cast an enormous shadow over what veteran U.S. diplomats and former government officials had regarded as America’s calming presence of global stability and continuity.

Despite some notable hiccups, the military, economic and moral power of the United States has dominated the post-World War II era, most notably after the Cold War came to an end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. All of that, some fear, may be lost if Trump gets his way and the U.S. abandons the principles under which the United Nations and numerous other international bodies were founded.

“The only conclusion you can draw is that 80 years of policy in standing up against aggressors has just been blown up without any sort of discussion or reflection,” said Ian Kelly, a U.S. ambassador to Georgia during the Obama and first Trump administration and now a professor at Northwestern University.

“I’m discouraged for a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons is that I had taken some encouragement at the beginning from the repeated references to ‘peace through strength,’” Kelly added. “This is not peace through strength — this is peace through surrender.”

Visits start on anniversary of war in Ukraine

Trump is set to host Macron on Monday, the three-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine, while Starmer will be at the White House on Thursday.

FILE – President-elect Donald Trump, left, attends a meeting with France’s President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Dec. 7, 2024. (Sarah Meyssonnier/Pool via AP, File)

Their visits come after Trump shook Europe with repeated criticism of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for failing to negotiate an end to the war and rebuffing a push to sign off on a deal giving the U.S. access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, which could be used in the American aerospace, medical and tech industries.

European leaders also were dismayed by Trump’s decision to dispatch top aides for preliminary talks with Russian officials in Saudi Arabia without Ukrainian or European officials at the table.

Another clash is set to play out at the U.N. on Monday after the U.S. proposed a competing resolution that lacks the same demands as one from Ukraine and the European Union for Moscow’s forces to immediately withdraw from the country.

On the minerals deal, Zelenskyy initially bristled, saying it was short on security guarantees for Ukraine. He said Sunday on X that “we are making great progress“ but noted that “we want a good economic deal that will be part of a true security guarantee system for Ukraine.”

Trump administration officials say they expect to reach a deal this week that would tie the U.S. and Ukrainian economies closer together — the last thing that Russia wants.

It follows a public spat, with Trump calling Zelenskyy a “dictator” and falsely charging Kyiv with starting the war. Russia, in fact, invaded its smaller and lesser-equipped neighbor in February 2022.

Zelenskyy, who said Sunday in response to a question that he would trade his office for peace or to join NATO, then angered Trump by saying the U.S. president was living in a Russian-made “disinformation space.” Confronting Trump might not be the best approach, analysts say.

“The response to President Trump doing something to you is not to do something back right away. You tend to get this kind of reaction,” said retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, former foreign policy aide to the late Sen. John McCain and current senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

He added, “This is part of a broader issue where I know the administration’s characterizing themselves as disruptors. I think a better term might be destabilizers. And, unfortunately, the destabilizing is sometimes us and our allies.”

That complicated dynamic makes this week’s task all the more difficult for Macron and Starmer, leaders of two of America’s closest allies, as they try to navigate talks with Trump.

High-stakes talks between European and US leaders

Macron said he intends to tell Trump that it’s in the joint interest of Americans and Europeans not to show weakness to Putin during U.S.-led negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. He also suggested that he’ll make the case that how Trump handles Putin could have enormous ramifications for U.S. dealings with China, the United States’ most significant economic and military competitor.

FILE -British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, left, and French President Emmanuel Macron shake hands ahead of a bilateral meeting at Chequers, near Aylesbury, England, Thursday Jan. 9, 2025. (Toby Melville/Pool Photo via AP, File)

“You can’t be weak in the face of President Putin. It’s not you, it’s not your trademark, it’s not in your interest,” Macron said on social media. “How can you then be credible in the face of China if you’re weak in the face of Putin?’”

Yet, Trump has shown a considerable measure of respect for the Russian leader. Trump said this month that he would like to see Russia rejoin what is now the Group of Seven major economies. Russia was suspended from the G8 after Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region.

Trump dismissed Zelenskyy’s complaints about Ukraine and Europe not being included in the opening of U.S.-Russia talks, suggesting he’s been negotiating “with no cards, and you get sick of it.”

Putin, on the other hand, wants to make a deal, Trump argued Friday. “He doesn’t have to make a deal. Because if he wanted, he would get the whole country,” Trump added.

The deference to Putin has left some longtime diplomats worried.

“The administration should consider going in a different direction because this isn’t going to work,” said Robert Wood, a retired career diplomat who served in multiple Republican and Democratic administrations, most recently as the deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations until December. “Let’s not kid ourselves: Russia started this war, and trying to rewrite the narrative isn’t going to serve the best interests of the U.S. or our allies.”