AMNA NAWAZ: President Donald Trump has picked a loyalist, Dan Bongino, to be second in command at the FBI, one who grew a massive online following spreading lies about election security, including that the agency he will now help oversee tried to rig the 2016 and 2020 elections against Trump.

GEOFF BENNETT: Lisa Desjardins is here with more.

So, Lisa, there are some FBI officials who say that the deputy director position is in many ways more important than the director role, because the deputy oversees the day-to-day operations of the agency.

What does it mean that Dan Bongino, someone who's never served as an FBI agent, will occupy this role?

LISA DESJARDINS: Bongino is very well known in the MAGA world.

He has this massive reach, millions of followers, but he also has repeatedly pushed misinformation on critical ideas.

So when you talk about Bongino, you have got to talk about the podcasting audience, where he pushed this idea that the 2020 election, falsely, was stolen, and specifically he said stolen by the FBI.

He's often gone against the FBI, railed against it as being an agency that is political and at one point he called to disband it.

Separately, he also spread misinformation about COVID.

For that reason, YouTube actually took him off YouTube at one point.

Now, looking at your resume, Bongino does have law enforcement experience.

He worked as a Secret Service agent, as a New York police officer, but he has, as you say, no FBI experience, which is unique for this situation.

He is a Trump appointee who worked at FOX News.

He will oversee that operation, 38,000 FBI agents right now.

That's a lot of day-to-day operations to run.

Critics are concerned not just because of his lack of experience, but you talk to FBI agents like we did, Frank Montoya, they say his conspiracy theories, the pushing of that and the loyalty, the way he's talked about Trump hyperbolically, disqualify him.

FRANK MONTOYA JR., Former FBI Official: You got to be objective if you're going to investigate violations of law.

You just have to.

You can't come in with preconceived notions because that will influence the outcomes of these investigations.

LISA DESJARDINS: Now, this will be the least qualified not just number two, but number one, with Kash Patel at the head of the FBI, that the service has ever seen.

But, of course, Trump is not looking at experience.

He wants disrupters and these are big-time disrupters.

AMNA NAWAZ: Meanwhile, Lisa, you're covering a lot of other news about a chaotic deadline for federal workers today.

What exactly is Elon Musk asking for?

LISA DESJARDINS: Right.

He's asking workers -- on Saturday, he sent out an e-mail.

We're going to show you what it said, asking all federal workers to e-mail back roughly five bullet points of what they did in the past week.

He said they had to get that back by tonight at midnight East Coast time.

Now, I want to say on camera why we're not showing the e-mail itself.

That's because Musk is known to put coding in e-mails that could reveal our sources for that.

So we retyped it.

Now, Musk went on social media and said that, if you don't respond to this, this ask for what you did last week, that you could be fired.

And you see that there.

So there's been a lot of confusion.

Do employees need to respond to this or not?

Just in the last bit of time, the Office of Personnel Management gave out clear guidance saying, no, it's voluntary.

You will not be fired if you don't send in what you did last week.

But this has been completely chaotic.

Some agencies told their employees, including Homeland Security and the FBI, do not respond.

Others said, you have to respond.

Workers just don't know how to act, what to do on their jobs.

And this is one example of that.

GEOFF BENNETT: So where do things stand with the mass firings and court cases in general?

LISA DESJARDINS: We're going to run through a lot quickly here.

Right now, by my count, 27,000 workers have been told they have been fired or will be fired.

A lot of news today.

So I'm going to go through some important things.

First, at USAID, there were more firings.

We had a reduction in force, which means career workers, 2,000 of them, notified that their jobs will end in April.

On the other side, for probationary workers, those who have been in the job less than two years, a ruling just in the past bit of time where six of those probationary workers were found by the Office of Special Counsel to be restored to their job.

Basically, the Office of Special Counsel found that what has happened to probationary workers is illegal, that it cannot be held.

Now, the issue is, this was just for six workers.

So, waiting -- thousands of other probationary workers, as I talk to you right now, waiting to see if that ruling can affect them.

That office that held that is trying to get there.

So, a lot of news.

And one other thing, a federal judge today found that DOGE cannot have access to Treasury and Education systems, personal data for student loans, and for federal employees.

The district judge ruled it is illegal.

They haven't proven that they need to access that, so, another big case.

GEOFF BENNETT: OK. Lisa Desjardins, our thanks to you, as always.

LISA DESJARDINS: You're welcome.