FBI Co-Deputy Director Andrew Bailey Resigns, Five Weeks Before Midterms

Andrew Bailey announced Monday, September 28, 2026, that he's resigning as the FBI's co-deputy director, roughly thirteen months after taking the job. He's heading back to 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 on X. He thanked President Trump, Attorney General Todd Blanche, and FBI Director Kash Patel, and said he's confident Patel "will continue to reform the FBI, combat violent crime, defend the homeland, ensure strong organizational accountability, and restore public trust."

Patel returned the praise. "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 on X, adding Bailey's leadership "will be missed."

Multiple people familiar with the move told NBC News and the Washington Post that Bailey informed bureau employees by internal email he was leaving for family reasons. MS Now was first to report the resignation.

An unusual arrangement from the start

Bailey resigned as Missouri's attorney general in September 2025 to join the FBI as co-deputy director, a newly invented post he shared first with Dan Bongino, the conservative podcaster and former Secret Service agent. Neither man had prior FBI experience, an unusual pairing for a job that typically goes to a career bureau veteran and doesn't require Senate confirmation, according to Reuters.

Bongino left in January 2026. The Hindustan Times reported his exit followed disagreements with then-Attorney General Pam Bondi over handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case files. Christopher Raia, a career FBI agent who previously ran the bureau's New York field office, stepped in alongside Bailey, and the two reportedly worked as part of a three-person leadership team with Patel, according to Reuters.

The Guardian, citing a New York Times report, said Bailey and Raia had a "somewhat contentious relationship" with Patel and went long stretches without speaking to each other.

The election-integrity work

Bailey's most visible assignment was overseeing pieces of the administration's election-related investigations. He was on scene in January 2026 when FBI agents executed a search warrant at the Fulton County, Georgia, election office and seized ballots and other materials tied to the 2020 presidential count, according to Reuters and the Guardian.

Reuters reported plainly that the FBI "has scrutinized election records from several states, but has not produced evidence to substantiate Trump's false claims that widespread voter fraud led to his electoral defeat in 2020." No verified evidence of the fraud Trump has alleged appears in these sources.

The coverage splits differently here. NBC News, the Guardian, and Reuters all frame Bailey's exit as significant precisely because of his election-security portfolio, arriving about five weeks before the midterm elections that will decide control of Congress. Axios ran the same timing angle in its headline treatment, but then included a detail the others didn't: a senior administration official told Axios reporter Marc Caputo that Bailey "didn't have much of a portfolio on election security or otherwise." The Fulton County search-warrant record shows Bailey was present for at least one major election-related operation, directly contradicting that characterization.

Part of a bigger pattern

Bailey's departure is the latest in a string of exits under Patel. The Hindustan Times noted Brian Driscoll, the FBI's former acting director, sued Patel and other Trump officials in September 2025, alleging a partisan purge of senior personnel. The Washington Post and Yahoo News reported an "unprecedented wave of dismissals and transfers" of experienced agents during Bailey's tenure, including the reassignment last week of the two top agents running counterterrorism in the FBI's Washington field office over their handling of a threat investigation involving Katie Miller, wife of top Trump aide Stephen Miller. Officials felt that probe was moving too slowly, three people told the Washington Post.

Patel is separately suing The Atlantic for $250 million over an article about his leadership, according to NBC News, and has had public clashes with Democratic members of Congress over his tenure.

On the record, Bailey's tenure wasn't without measurable results. The NY Post reported his St. Louis violent-crime crackdown produced more than 90 arrests, the seizure of three dozen guns, and $310,000 in seized assets, according to the Missouri Times. A person familiar with the situation told the Post that Bailey had struggled settling in Washington and being away from his family in Missouri, consistent with his own stated reason for leaving.

Trump hasn't named a replacement co-deputy director. Raia remains in place. Whether the administration fills the second deputy slot again, and who runs point on election-related investigations heading into the midterms, is unresolved.