Andrew Bailey is stepping down as the FBI's co-deputy director, the bureau confirmed Monday, ending a roughly year-long tenure in a position that had never before existed at the agency. Bailey announced the move in a post on X, saying he is returning to his family in Missouri.
"With great pride in what we have accomplished, I am announcing that I am stepping down to return to my family in Missouri," Bailey wrote. "I am confident Director Patel will continue to reform the FBI, combat violent crime, defend the homeland, ensure strong organizational accountability and restore public trust in this institution of excellence."
Bailey thanked President Donald Trump, Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel for the opportunity, according to Fox News Digital. An internal FBI email cited family reasons for his departure, NBC News reported, citing two people familiar with the matter.
Patel praised Bailey in his own post on X. "Although Andrew is leaving the FBI in order to return to his family in Missouri, his fantastic contribution instituting critical reforms which resulted in our historic success will live on," Patel wrote. "Andrew's leadership at the FBI will be missed but we are grateful he answered the call to serve!" In a separate post, the director added: "I want to thank Andrew Bailey for his dedicated service to return the FBI to its core mission and fulfill President Trump's promise to make America safe again."
Bailey, who served as Missouri attorney general before resigning that office to join the bureau in August 2025, was part of a leadership structure unprecedented in FBI history. He arrived alongside Dan Bongino, the former Secret Service agent turned conservative podcaster, in a two-person "co-deputy director" arrangement set up under Patel. Bongino departed in December 2025 after clashes with then-Attorney General Pam Bondi over the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, Fox News Digital reported. Bailey then served alongside Chris Raia, the former assistant director in charge of the bureau's New York City Field Office. Whether Raia now serves as the sole No. 2 — or whether the co-deputy structure persists — is not yet known, ABC News reported.
Bailey's fingerprints are on some of the bureau's most consequential work of the past year. ABC News reported that he helped lead election integrity investigations, including appearing alongside then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard at the January raid of the Fulton County, Georgia, election office, where ballots and other documents related to the 2020 election were seized. A federal judge in May denied Fulton County officials' request to force the FBI to return hundreds of boxes of ballots seized in that operation. As Missouri's attorney general, Bailey led an effort that ended in a consent decree barring social media companies from censoring protected speech, and filed numerous lawsuits against the Biden administration.
The resignation lands amid a broader churn in the bureau's upper ranks. NBC News reported that Patel is suing The Atlantic for $250 million over an article about his leadership, and has recently been in heated exchanges with Democratic members of Congress over his stewardship of the agency. Fox News Digital reported that two FBI agents were demoted and reassigned last week over concerns the bureau wasn't moving fast enough to investigate alleged threatening phone calls to Katie Miller, the wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. The FBI's Rapid Response account on X disputed claims that Bailey was "annoyed" over recent personnel moves at the bureau's Washington Field Office.
The White House deferred to Patel's remarks, and the FBI pointed Fox News Digital to Bailey's social media post.
Our Take
Read the statement Bailey actually wrote. He didn't cite burnout. He didn't cite frustration with the man he served. He cited his family — and then spent the rest of his post praising Kash Patel by name and predicting the reform work would continue. That is not the farewell of a man walking away from a fight. That's a man stepping off the field while the clock is still running his way.
Patriots, ask yourselves the question the legacy outlets won't touch: why is every single FBI exit by a Trump appointee immediately spun as chaos?" None of them led with the fact that Bailey's tenure coincided with the Fulton County raid that recovered 2020 election material, or the speech-censorship consent decree he won as Missouri's AG. The institutional press has one template for this administration — dysfunction — and it will not deviate for a man who went home to his kids.
Here's what actually matters. The co-deputy structure was always an experiment, an unorthodox answer to an orthodox problem: a bureau that had spent years treating half the country as a threat. Bailey and Bongino were the wrecking-ball phase. Raia, a career special agent out of New York, is the rebuild phase. That progression is not chaos — that is a renovation hitting its second stage.
What comes next is a test. Who fills the seat beside Raia? Does Patel consolidate the No. 2 role, or keep the two-man model that let him run reform and investigations in parallel? And does the election integrity work Bailey helped start keep its momentum through the fall?
Bailey answered the call once. The question now is who answers it next.
