(Headline USA) The head of the FBI’s New York field office has been named co-deputy director of the bureau, replacing Dan Bongino following his recent departure, an FBI spokesperson said Friday.
Christopher Raia, who helped lead the response to the deadly truck attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day last year, was picked to run the New York office in April after having served as a top counterterrorism official at FBI headquarters. A former Coast Guard officer, Raia joined the FBI in 2003 and during the course of his two-decade career has investigated violent crime, drugs and gangs as well as overseen counterterrorism and national security investigations.
New York FBI Assistant Director Christopher Raia revealed that NBA players and coaches were allegedly used by the Italian mafia to lure high-stakes poker players into rigged games.
The games were fixed using X-ray technology, with the profits funneled back to fund Italian mafia… pic.twitter.com/Q2MJhlwRAz
— Shadow of Ezra (@ShadowofEzra) October 23, 2025
As a career FBI agent, Raia is a more conventional selection for the FBI’s No. 2 job than was Bongino, a popular conservative podcaster who had previously served as a Secret Service agent but had never worked for the FBI until being selected by the Trump administration last year.
Raia is expected to serve as co-deputy director alongside Andrew Bailey, the former Missouri attorney general who was named to the job last August. He is scheduled to start next week.
He became the head of the New York field office after his predecessor, James Dennehy, who was reported to have resisted Justice Department efforts to scrutinize agents who participated in politically sensitive investigations, was forced to retire.
Bongino announced last month that he was departing the bureau following a brief and tumultuous tenure.
In May, he falsely claimed that the FBI had video proving that deceased multimillionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. However, the DOJ Inspector General had already released a report stating that no such video footage exists—and indeed, the video released by the FBI this year didn’t even show Epstein’s cell.
Bongino also defended the FBI’s investigation into the July 2024 Trump assassination attempt, insisting that the would-be assassin acted alone and that the FBI acted properly by releasing his body for cremation and hosing down the AGR rooftop the day after the event. Bongino told the widow of the firefighter who died in the attempt, Helen Comperatore, that the FBI would be releasing more information on the event—but the bureau never did.
Most recently, Bongino has touted the arrest of an autistic black man in the Jan. 6 pipe bombs case, flip-flopping on his earlier remarks as a podcaster that the incident was an inside job.
He officially ended his tenure last week.
No immediate successor was named for Raia in New York.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
