'Not Letting You Get Away With This' - Bongino Just Called Out Obama
Bongino Tells Obama ‘I Know Things Too’—But His Warning Reopens a Much Bigger Fight Over Russiagate and DOJ Power
Barack Obama went on late-night television to warn about presidents using the Justice Department against their political enemies.
Dan Bongino heard something very different.
To the former FBI deputy director, Obama’s warning sounded less like a defense of institutional norms and more like hypocrisy from a former president whose administration presided over the opening stages of the investigation that would become one of the defining political controversies of Donald Trump’s first term.
Bongino responded with a sentence designed to make people wonder exactly what he knows.
“You know, I know things too, Mr. President, and so do you,” Bongino said on his May 7 podcast.
Then he went further.
“Not pretending I was at your level, you were the president, I was just the deputy director of the FBI, but it’s not a small thing.”
“And I’m not letting you get away with this, no chance!”
The exchange immediately generated headlines.
But the most important part of Bongino’s response may be what he did not say.
He did not identify a specific crime committed by Obama.
He did not produce a document proving Obama personally ordered an unlawful investigation of Trump.
And he did not explain precisely what information he learned inside the FBI that he believes Obama already knows.
That makes the remark politically explosive.
It does not make it a criminal case.
The dispute began two days earlier with Obama’s appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Colbert asked the former president which presidential powers he now believed needed greater restrictions.
Obama focused heavily on the relationship between the White House and the Justice Department.
He argued that presidents should not be able to direct attorneys general to prosecute particular people and said the country may now need to formally codify norms that previous presidents often treated as understood limits on executive behavior.
Obama’s broader warning was about politicizing criminal justice.
He said government cannot be allowed to become a system in which whoever controls federal power uses that power against enemies or to benefit friends.
He also described the attorney general as the lawyer for the American people rather than the president’s personal lawyer and argued that specific charging decisions should retain a meaningful degree of independence from White House political demands.
Obama did not name Trump during that portion of the interview.
The context, however, was difficult to miss.
Trump’s second administration has aggressively investigated and, in some cases, prosecuted or attempted to prosecute people whom Trump has publicly attacked.
Some of those cases have survived.
Others have run into judges, procedural problems or evidentiary questions.
Obama was arguing that the larger pattern risks weakening the barrier between presidential politics and federal prosecution.
Bongino’s response essentially turned that accusation around.
His message was:
You are warning about weaponized justice now.
What about what happened when you were president?
That is why the words “I know things too” attracted so much attention.
Bongino is not merely another commentator speculating from outside government.
For approximately ten months, he occupied one of the most powerful positions inside the FBI.
Trump selected Bongino as FBI deputy director in February 2025, and he formally entered the job in March under Director Kash Patel.
Later that year, the bureau added Andrew Bailey under a co-deputy structure.
Bongino left the FBI on January 3, 2026, and returned to his podcast the following month.
That gives his statements a different weight than they carried before he joined the bureau.
Before 2025, Bongino could say he believed the FBI had concealed something.
After 2025, audiences could reasonably ask whether he had actually seen internal records.
Bongino says he did.
In April, he publicly described discovering what he called a “mother lode” of material relating to Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI investigation opened during the 2016 campaign into possible links between Trump campaign associates and Russia.
Bongino said some of the material was discovered in FBI burn bags used for sensitive documents awaiting destruction.
He described one roughly 100-page document as extraordinarily sensitive and said the material revealed information about what officials knew during the Russia investigation.
That claim is central to understanding his Obama response.
When Bongino says “I know things,” he appears to be referencing at least partly what he says he learned while reviewing internal government records.
But here again, the distinction between a claim and independently established evidence matters.
Bongino has publicly described the documents.
He has characterized what he believes they mean.
The public has not been given everything he says he personally reviewed inside the FBI.
That makes it impossible to treat every conclusion he draws from those records as independently verified merely because he once held a high-ranking FBI job.
And Bongino’s own experience inside the bureau demonstrates why that caution matters.
Before entering the FBI, he repeatedly argued that the unsolved January 6 pipe-bomb case involved an FBI cover-up and suggested the bomber could have been part of an inside operation.
Once he became deputy director and gained access to the investigation, the FBI ultimately arrested a suspect whose alleged conduct did not fit Bongino’s earlier theory.
Reporting on the investigation found that investigators had possessed important cellphone data but had been unable to interpret it until new technical work unlocked the information.
Bongino later backed away from his earlier “inside job” claims.
That episode does not prove Bongino is wrong about Crossfire Hurricane.
It proves something more basic.
Access to internal information can change conclusions.
And political theories formed outside government do not automatically survive contact with the complete investigative record.
The Russia investigation itself requires exactly that kind of separation.
There are several different questions that frequently get collapsed into the word “Russiagate.”
Did Russia interfere in the 2016 election?
Did Russian officials want to influence the result?
Did people associated with Trump have contacts with Russians?
Did the Trump campaign criminally conspire with the Russian government?
Did the FBI properly open and conduct Crossfire Hurricane?
Were surveillance applications handled correctly?
Did intelligence officials exaggerate, manipulate or politicize some findings?
Those questions do not all have the same answer.
The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee found that Russia conducted an aggressive, multifaceted effort to influence the 2016 election.
That investigation also identified significant counterintelligence concerns involving people around the Trump campaign.
At the same time, Republican then-Chairman Marco Rubio emphasized that the committee found no evidence that candidate Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to interfere in the election.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller reached a similar legal conclusion on conspiracy.
His investigation documented Russian interference but did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in those interference activities.
Those two findings can coexist.
Russia interfered.
A Trump-Russia criminal conspiracy was not established.
That difference is one reason years of political shorthand have created so much confusion.
Trump and his supporters often use “Russia hoax” to describe the entire episode.
Critics of Trump sometimes speak about Russian interference and Trump-Russia collusion as though they were interchangeable.
They are not.
The first has been repeatedly documented.
The second was not established as a criminal conspiracy by Mueller or the Republican-led Senate investigation.
There is also substantial documented criticism of how the FBI conducted portions of Crossfire Hurricane.
The Justice Department inspector general found that opening the investigation complied with applicable FBI and DOJ policies and said it did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias caused the investigation to be opened.
But the same watchdog found significant inaccuracies and omissions in applications seeking surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Those problems raised serious concerns about FBI management and the FISA process.
That is another example of why simple narratives fail.
The inspector general did not conclude that Crossfire Hurricane was invented without a valid predicate because Democrats wanted to destroy Trump.
It also did not give the FBI a clean bill of health.
The report documented serious failures.
Republicans have spent years arguing those failures were more than bureaucratic incompetence.
Bongino is now among those claiming internal records reveal something much deeper.
And the Trump administration has reopened that question through an active Justice Department investigation.
Beginning in 2025, federal prosecutors launched a broad inquiry into allegations that officials from the Obama and Biden eras participated in a continuing effort to misuse intelligence and law enforcement investigations against Trump.
The investigation has examined figures including former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former senior FBI officials.
By spring 2026, the probe had intensified.
Reuters reported that FBI agents were interviewing current and former CIA personnel about Brennan’s role in the 2017 intelligence assessment on Russian election interference.
Investigators have examined whether Brennan made false statements to Congress concerning aspects of how that assessment was prepared and how the Steele dossier was handled.
Brennan denies wrongdoing.
He has also challenged the investigations in court, arguing they are politically motivated retaliation driven by Trump’s longstanding hostility toward people connected with the Russia investigation.
That active investigation gives Bongino’s remarks a legal context they would not otherwise have.
But it still does not turn “I know things” into evidence against Obama.
No publicly disclosed charge in that investigation establishes that Obama personally committed a crime.
The existence of a grand jury or criminal investigation proves that prosecutors are investigating.
It does not prove the targets or subjects committed the conduct being investigated.
That principle applies regardless of which political party controls the Justice Department.
And ironically, that principle goes directly to the argument Obama was making on Colbert.
Obama’s concern was that the criminal justice system should not become a tool presidents use against political adversaries.
Bongino’s response is that Obama has little credibility making that argument because institutions under Obama investigated Trump’s campaign and because Bongino believes there is much more to that history than Americans were originally told.
Both arguments ultimately depend on the same standard.
Evidence.
If federal investigators can prove Obama-era officials deliberately fabricated intelligence, knowingly misled Congress, illegally manipulated surveillance authorities or participated in some larger criminal conspiracy, then those facts should be evaluated on their merits.
If investigators cannot prove those things, political anger is not a substitute.
The standard should not change because the defendant is someone a president dislikes.
That is also why Bongino’s phrase “I’m not letting you get away with this” can be interpreted in more than one way.
Some listeners heard it as a threat.
Others heard it as a promise to use his media platform to expose information he believes Obama and other former officials have escaped accountability for.
Bongino did not announce that he possessed arrest authority.
He no longer works at the FBI.
He did not announce an indictment.
He did not say he personally was prosecuting Obama.
What he did was make a deliberately ominous statement based partly on knowledge he says he acquired while serving inside the bureau.
That is politically significant.
Legally, it remains undefined.
Bongino’s personal history with Obama adds another layer.
Before becoming one of the former president’s most relentless political critics, Bongino spent years in the U.S. Secret Service.
He served on the Presidential Protective Division during Obama’s presidency.
At the time, Bongino publicly distinguished his political disagreements from his experiences protecting the Obama family and spoke positively about them personally.
His post-government career moved in a dramatically different direction.
Bongino became one of conservative media’s most prominent voices, building an audience around criticism of Democrats, federal institutions and what he frequently described as the “deep state.”
Then Trump put him inside one of those institutions.
That unusual transition—from outsider accusing the FBI of corruption to the FBI’s No. 2 official—is what makes his current podcast different from the show he hosted before 2025.
Bongino can now say he has seen things his audience has not.
He has repeatedly used that experience since returning to broadcasting.
In late April, he said the Crossfire Hurricane material he encountered was far worse than he had expected.
Days later, he warned that if political power changed hands again, he feared people on the other side would use federal law enforcement against him and other Trump officials.
Fox reported that Bongino even discussed the possibility of ending up in federal prison under a future Democratic administration.
That creates an obvious tension.
Bongino says Democrats weaponized institutions and could do so again.
Obama says the Trump administration is politicizing the justice system now.
Each side says it is defending law enforcement from the other side’s abuse.
And both sides increasingly describe investigations of their own political allies as illegitimate while portraying investigations of their opponents as accountability.
That cycle is larger than Obama and Bongino.
It is now one of the defining disputes over the Justice Department.
The Trump administration says prior FBI, intelligence and prosecutorial investigations established a pattern of weaponization against Trump and conservatives.
Its opponents say Trump is using the Justice Department to retroactively punish investigators and political adversaries who angered him.
The current Brennan investigation illustrates the collision.
Prosecutors say they are examining whether a former CIA director made false statements and whether earlier intelligence processes were corrupted.
Brennan says the investigation itself is the abuse.
The ultimate answer cannot come from slogans like “Russiagate” or “weaponization.”
It has to come from documents, testimony and ultimately—if charges are filed—the evidentiary standards of a courtroom.
There is another reason Bongino’s warning should be treated cautiously.
He has not fully explained whether the things he claims to know concern Obama personally or simply senior officials who served during Obama’s presidency.
That is a major difference.
Presidents oversee enormous governments.
Proving misconduct by an FBI agent, intelligence official or Cabinet officer does not automatically prove that the president directed that misconduct.
A case against Obama personally would require evidence connecting him to a specific unlawful act with the relevant intent.
The phrase “you were the president” does not supply that connection.
It raises the question.
It does not answer it.
The declassified intelligence fight has nevertheless given Republicans new material.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence under the Trump administration released records in 2025 arguing that Obama-era officials manipulated intelligence surrounding the post-election assessment of Russian activity.
Trump officials described the documents in extraordinarily accusatory terms and referred material for investigation.
Those interpretations remain contested.
Even subsequent reviews critical of how portions of the 2017 assessment were produced have not erased the core finding that Russia conducted influence and cyber operations during the election.
Reuters reported this year that the central conclusion that Russia interfered to assist Trump over Hillary Clinton was later affirmed by the Justice Department, a bipartisan Senate investigation and a more recent CIA review.
That is important because two different controversies are again being blended together.
One is whether Russia interfered.
The other is whether American officials properly investigated and characterized that interference.
Evidence of improper FBI or intelligence conduct would not mean Russia did nothing.
Evidence of Russian interference would not mean every action taken by the FBI was justified.
Both questions have to be examined independently.
That framework makes Bongino’s challenge to Obama more serious without overstating it.
He is not wrong that there remain unresolved and actively investigated questions about how government institutions handled Trump-Russia intelligence.
He is not wrong that internal FBI failures were documented.
And he is not inventing the fact that current federal investigators are revisiting conduct by Obama-era officials.
But none of that establishes the strongest interpretation circulating around his podcast clip:
That Bongino has now publicly revealed he possesses secret proof of an Obama crime.
He has not.
At least not publicly.
The actual statement is far more ambiguous.
“I know things too.”
That could mean he knows details about internal FBI conduct.
It could mean he has seen classified or sensitive records.
It could mean he believes Obama knows more about actions by his administration than he has acknowledged.
It could simply be rhetorical language designed to tell Obama that Bongino considers him hypocritical.
Until Bongino provides specifics, anything more is inference.
And that is where the original confrontation becomes almost perfectly symmetrical.
Obama was warning Americans not to assume political accusation equals legitimate prosecution.
Bongino responded by implying that Obama himself has avoided accountability for something the public does not fully know.
Obama wants institutional barriers.
Bongino wants institutional accountability.
Those goals are not necessarily opposites.
A functioning justice system needs both.
It needs the ability to investigate powerful former officials when evidence supports an investigation.
It also needs protections against presidents converting prosecutors into weapons against opponents.
The challenge is deciding which one is happening in any particular case.
That cannot be determined by whether the target has a D or an R next to his name.
Nor can it be determined by a viral podcast clip.
Bongino’s time inside the FBI unquestionably makes his claims worth examining more closely than ordinary political speculation.
It does not make those claims self-proving.
His own experience with the January 6 pipe-bomb investigation demonstrates that insiders can learn facts that overturn assumptions rather than confirm them.
The same rule should apply to Crossfire Hurricane.
Release what can legally be released.
Investigate genuine evidence.
Separate documented FBI failures from allegations of criminal conspiracy.
Separate Russian election interference from claims of Trump-Russia collusion.
And separate misconduct by individual officials from claims that Barack Obama personally directed an illegal scheme.
Those distinctions may be less dramatic than “I know things too.”
They are also the difference between political suspicion and an evidence-based case.
Bongino has opened the door.
He has said publicly that his time inside the FBI changed what he understands about the Russia investigation.
He has described documents he believes Americans were never supposed to see.
He has now directly challenged the president who was in office when Crossfire Hurricane began.
And federal investigators are separately examining Obama-era intelligence officials today.
That makes the underlying questions legitimate.
But it does not resolve them.
Obama’s statement that presidents should not weaponize prosecutors against enemies can be debated against his own administration’s record.
Bongino is plainly determined to have that debate.
What he has not yet done is publicly connect his ominous warning to evidence proving criminal wrongdoing by Obama.
If he possesses that evidence, the next step matters far more than the podcast line.
Produce it through lawful channels.
Let investigators test it.
Let the people accused answer it.
And if prosecutors believe a crime can actually be proved, let them prove it under the same legal standards that should govern everyone else.
Until then, Bongino’s message is a warning.
It is not a verdict.
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And the real significance of “I know things too” is not that the sentence settles Russiagate.
It is that a former FBI deputy director is telling a former president that, in his view, the country still has not heard the whole story.
