Dan Bongino, the former deputy director of the FBI, said on a podcast released Tuesday that he would occasionally spread false information to identify “snakes” within the agency that he believed were leaking details to the media.

Bongino told Sean Hannity on the Fox News host’s podcast “Hang Out with Sean Hannity” that he encountered two distinct groups when he first began working for the agency, one of which he labeled the “good FBI” consisting of agents who investigated crimes against children and white-collar crimes.

“And then you had this other FBI which were — which was populated with, to say, unfortunately, snakes is being nice,” he told Hannity. “And here’s the problem, Sean. It wasn’t always obvious which FBI they were in.”

He said it took some time for him and FBI Director Kash Patel to figure out whether individual agents were “part of the good FBI or the bad FBI,” and they sometimes relied on outside sources for help.

“Sometimes they would get it wrong too,” Bongino said. “It happened a couple times where they’d say ‘Oh, you can trust John Smith,’ right? And you trust John Smith, and then a week later, you see like a leak in the media, and you’d be like, I’m pretty sure that came from John Smith.”

Bongino said he decided to “start messing with people” after that, offering “innocuous” details about his whereabouts and schedule to flush out supposed leakers whom he could then confront if the story later appeared in the headlines.

“So, it was like we would play this — we had to play this little game,” he said.

The operation of the FBI has been routinely criticized under Patel’s leadership, with a recent profile in The Atlantic detailing an alleged pattern of drinking, unexplained absences and paranoia over losing his job. Patel sued the magazine for defamation in response.

Bongino, who left the bureau in January amid a reported dispute with former Attorney General Pam Bondi over the Jeffrey Epstein files, also faced his share of criticism during his nearly one year of service.

He and Patel were accused by active-duty and retired FBI agents and analysts in a 115-page report released in December of “spending too much time on social media and public relations.” One source also described Bongino as “something of a clown” in the report.

About a month after stepping down from the FBI, Bongino emerged back into public view with the relaunch of his daily two-hour talk show on the Rumble video platform. He also returned as a Fox News contributor, making his first appearance back on the network on Hannity’s show.

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