The FBI's second-in-command appeared to endorse a social media post from a former agent now running for Congress as a Democrat on an explicitly anti-Trump platform, and the bureau's only explanation is that it was a mistake. Just the News reported that FBI Deputy Director Christopher Raia's public LinkedIn page showed he had "liked" a campaign post from David Sundberg, a fired FBI agent who launched a Democratic congressional bid in Maryland in February.
The interaction remained visible on Raia's profile until Monday, when Just the News made an inquiry. Raia then scrubbed the record from his account. The bureau's assistant director of the Office of Public Affairs told the outlet the acknowledgment was "accidental and immediately removed when brought to attention."
That's the official line. But the facts around this episode deserve more than a one-word excuse, especially given the FBI's long, documented history of institutional hostility toward the current administration.
Raia is a career FBI agent. He led the bureau's response to the deadly truck attack in New Orleans on New Year's Day 2025 and was later tapped to run the New York Field Office. Director Kash Patel appointed him deputy director last year, replacing Dan Bongino in what the New York Times has described as a role akin to the bureau's chief operating officer. He now serves as co-deputy director alongside Andrew Bailey, the former attorney general of Missouri.
A senior FBI official told Just the News that Patel still has "full confidence" in Raia. The bureau's public affairs office called him "an invaluable leader on Director Patel's team, working 24/7 to crush violent crime, defend the homeland, and restore public trust."
That language is reassuring. The underlying incident is not.
David Sundberg is not some quiet retiree. He joined the FBI in 2002 and rose to lead the bureau's Washington Field Office, the same office that assisted investigations ultimately leading Special Counsel Jack Smith to charge President Trump over alleged retention of classified documents and challenges to the 2020 election results. The Trump administration fired Sundberg last year, and his campaign biography frames his termination as part of a "retaliatory purge targeting those who stood up against the weaponization of government agencies as tools of partisan politics."
Sundberg launched his Maryland campaign in February to replace outgoing Rep. Steny Hoyer, a prominent House Democrat. His public messaging since then has been anything but subtle. In one Facebook post, he wrote:
"This is what happens when you take thoughtless retribution against federal employees. We are ALL less safe now because of Kash Patel."
In another February post, Sundberg commented that "America is less safe with Kash Patel at the helm of the FBI." He has repeatedly cast his firing as proof of political courage. The FBI's long record of counterintelligence activity directed at Trump and his supporters makes these claims land in a very specific institutional context.
Last week, Sundberg posted to Facebook: "I've already taken on Donald Trump and paid the price for it." He added: "I investigated January 6th. I investigated attempts to overturn an election. When I wouldn't fall in line, I was fired. That's exactly why I'm running for Congress."
In yet another post, he declared: "I don't just talk about holding Trump accountable, I've done it." Most recently, he posted a photo from a "No Kings" rally in southern Maryland, standing beside a sign reading "RESIST. Choose Democracy."
This is the candidate whose social media content the FBI's deputy director appeared to publicly affirm, roughly one month after Raia was appointed to his new role.
The FBI says it was accidental. Fine. People do misclick on social media. But several features of this episode make the explanation harder to accept at face value.
First, the interaction was visible on Raia's public LinkedIn page for what appears to have been weeks. It was not caught internally. It was not self-corrected. It was removed only after a journalist called to ask about it. That is not what "immediately removed when brought to attention" looks like when the attention comes from a newsroom, not from the bureau's own oversight.
Second, the post Raia liked was not some innocuous career update. It was a campaign post from a man running for Congress as a Democrat whose entire platform is built on opposition to the current FBI director and the president who appointed him. Sundberg's campaign biography explicitly frames his candidacy around claims that the Trump administration engaged in political retaliation inside the FBI.
Third, Raia holds the number-two job at the FBI, a position with enormous operational authority. The bureau's past willingness to secretly obtain Kash Patel's phone records while he was a private citizen is a reminder that institutional loyalties inside the FBI have real consequences, not just symbolic ones.
Just the News preserved screenshots of the interaction and the post before Raia's profile was cleaned up. The outlet also noted that the Sundberg campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
None of this exists in a vacuum. The FBI spent years under previous leadership entangled in investigations and operations that critics, and now official reviews, have described as politically motivated. The Biden-era bureau's conduct toward Patel himself is part of that record. Reporting has shown the Biden-era FBI swept up two years of Patel's calls, texts, and financial records under the Jack Smith probe.
Sundberg's own career arc fits this pattern neatly. He led the Washington Field Office that supported investigations into the sitting president. He was fired. He then launched a congressional campaign built entirely around the claim that he was punished for doing the right thing. His social media is a running indictment of the current FBI director by name.
And the deputy director, the man Patel personally chose to help run the bureau, appeared to give that messaging a public thumbs-up on LinkedIn.
The broader institutional backdrop matters here. Allegations of the Biden-era FBI paying an anti-Trump tech group for January 6 investigations and whistleblower claims about bias inside earlier FBI probes have created a well-documented pattern. Whether Raia's LinkedIn activity was careless or something more, it lands in an environment where the bureau's credibility on political neutrality is already thin.
The FBI's statement did not explain how the acknowledgment was accidental. It did not say whether Raia and Sundberg have a personal relationship, a professional history, or ongoing contact. It did not say whether the bureau has any internal policy governing senior officials' social media interactions with political candidates, let alone candidates who are actively campaigning against the FBI director.
The exact date and content of the post Raia liked have not been fully detailed. The exact date Raia was appointed and the exact date Sundberg was fired remain described only in relative terms. And the question of whether anyone inside the FBI noticed the interaction before Just the News called remains open.
Director Patel, who has staked his tenure on rooting out the kind of anti-Trump bias that whistleblowers have alleged inside earlier FBI operations, now faces a question about the man he personally installed as his deputy. The bureau says Patel has full confidence in Raia. That confidence may be warranted. But the public deserves more than a two-sentence statement and a scrubbed LinkedIn page.
If the FBI wants the country to believe it has turned the page on institutional bias, it cannot keep asking Americans to take its word for it, especially when the evidence keeps showing up on public profiles for anyone to see.
