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FBI RAIDS JOHN BOLTON’S HOME: (MORE)TRUMP RETRIBUTION?

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The FBI raided Trump nemesis and former Trump national security advisor John Bolton’s home this morning. Is it part of what many critics consider Donald Trump’s retribution campaign? It certainly sounds that way. Trump’s comments on the raid sound like he’s all but coming out and saying he ordered it and said he’s the country’s “chief law enforcement officer.

The New York Times:

When federal agents armed with a search warrant showed up at John R. Bolton’s home outside Washington at dawn on Friday, it was a display of one of the government’s most intimidating powers, in this case deployed against a fierce and high-profile critic of President Trump.

It is not yet clear what evidence the Justice Department cited in convincing a federal judge to sign off on the search warrant, or what culpability Mr. Bolton might have in an on-and-off investigation into whether he mishandled classified information dating back to when he served as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser during the president’s first term.

But the episode illustrated how Mr. Trump’s campaign of retribution has undercut the principle that law enforcement should keep a substantial distance from politics, stoking questions about whether even legitimate investigations are colored by the president’s insistence on putting his perceived enemies through the same treatment he faced as a target of multiple inquiries.

From Mr. Trump’s first term, he was repeatedly warned by aides — including his White House counsel and chief of staff at the time — that he should refrain from publicly accusing his enemies of breaking the law.

Among the reasons, aides told him, was that some day, when one of his enemies did do something wrong, the public might not believe it because there would be a perception that the accusation stemmed from Mr. Trump’s drive for retribution.

“For all we know, the investigation into John Bolton’s conduct may be rock solid, but Trump’s Justice Department has lost any presumption of regularity,” said Barbara L. McQuade, a professor of law at the University of Michigan and a U.S. attorney during the Obama administration.

“One of the reasons prosecutors keep their mouths shut about politics is so that if and when investigative activity is undertaken, there will be no appearance of bias,” she said. “In light of all of the threats the Trump administration has made to target his enemies, they have lost any presumption of good faith.”

In his seven months back in office, Mr. Trump and his administration have used a whole-of-government approach to go after his perceived enemies as well as people and institutions he sees as impeding his agenda, including academic institutions, news organizations and law firms. In doing so, they have not only in many cases put legal and financial pressure on their targets but also sent broader signals about the hefty costs that criticism of Mr. Trump could incur.

The Rolling Stone’s headline reads: “FBI Targets Yet Another Former Trump Official Because He Made Trump Mad”:

Whatever Bolton, a Bush-era Iraq War propagandist and regime-change enthusiast who later joined the first Trump White House as a top aide, does or doesn’t have in his house is almost irrelevant to what’s going on here: An openly lawless administration and Republican Party that pretends to hate the “Deep State” is merely expanding it, repurposing it to punish Trump’s personal nemeses. Republicans, of course, worked to shield Trump from any accountability in his post-presidency after Mar-a-Lago was raided by the feds because he wouldn’t stop hoarding classified documents.

But more importantly, Trump’s FBI has been going after Bolton for the same reason this administration launched, at the president’s explicit direction, a criminal investigation into a man whose only crime seems to be his refusal to help Trump steal an election. He pissed off Trump, so now he has to suffer. In the new authoritarian age of Trump, that is true for so many on the federal government’s ever-growing enemies list, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a famous warmonger or a powerless civilian.

Fox News:

Federal agents raided the Maryland home of former National Security Advisor John Bolton on Friday morning, according to two senior government enforcement sources briefed on the matter.

Federal agents reportedly busted into Bolton’s house in Bethesda, Maryland, at around 7 a.m. local time in an investigation ordered by FBI Director Kash Patel, who took to X with a cryptic post minutes later.

“NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission,” he wrote without directly referencing the raid.

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino shared the post and wrote, “Public corruption will not be tolerated.”

Meanwhile, Attorney General Pam Bondi also warned, “America’s safety isn’t negotiable. Justice will be pursued. Always.”

Trump told reporters he saw the raid on television Friday morning and said he did not know any details about the investigation.

“He’s not a smart guy, but he could be very unpatriotic,” Trump said. “I mean, we’re going to find out. I know nothing about it. I just saw it this morning.”

CIA Director John Ratcliffe provided Patel with limited access to U.S. intelligence that served as the basis for the search warrant, a source familiar with the Bolton raid and the evidence used to justify it told Fox News Digital.

“I can’t give you any more details than that, but let’s just say that John Bolton really had some nerve to attack Trump over his handling of classified information,” the source told Fox News Digital.

The Daily Kos’
headline reads ‘Trump’s critics are getting raided by the FBI now’

The FBI on Friday raided the Maryland home of President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser turned frequent Trump critic John Bolton, supercharging the United States’ descent into authoritarianism as he weaponizes the federal government against his perceived enemies.

The New York Post reported that FBI Director Kash Patel personally ordered the raid on Bolton’s home, claiming that it’s related to allegations that Bolton is in possession of classified documents.

“NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission,” Patel wrote in a post on X as agents were rifling through Bolton’s home.

However, given that Bolton is one of 60 people on Patel’s “enemies list” whom he considers to be “disloyal” to Trump and should be prosecuted, the raid looks instead like the kind of lawfare Trump has wrongly claimed he was a victim of.

Trump played coy when asked if he knew about the raid. “I could know about it. I could be the one starting it. I’m actually the chief law enforcement officer,” Trump told reporters.

The Bulwark offers this “refresher” recap of Bolton’s relationship with Trump:

  • Bolton served as Trump’s third national security advisor—following the brief stint of Mike Flynn and the stormy tenure of H.R. McMaster. Bolton succeeded McMaster on April 9, 2018 and remained national security advisor until he resigned on September 10, 2019.
  • After leaving the Trump administration, he wrote a book about his tenure.
  • Per government requirements, Bolton submitted the book manuscript to the National Security Council for pre-publication review, a process designed to ensure that former government employees do not inadvertently publish classified information. The review process delayed the book’s publication.
  • On April 27, 2020, after a lengthy negotiation with Ellen Knight, the senior director for records access and information security management at the NSC, Bolton claimed that Knight gave oral approval to move forward with publication.
  • But on May 2, 2020, the NSC’s senior director for intelligence began a “supplemental” review of the manuscript. The publication date was delayed again.
  • Bolton had given his publisher permission to move ahead with publication while the Ellis review was still underway.
  • Bolton’s book had already been printed and bound, and members of the media had obtained advance copies when, on June 17, the government sought an injunction to prevent its release.
  • President Trump then attempted to have courts strip Bolton of all proceeds from book sales.
  • The Trump administration initial civil action, U.S. v. Bolton, was followed by an attempt to pursue criminal charges against Bolton.
  • In the fall of 2020, as the presidential election neared a close, Trump’s DOJ head for national security matters, John Demers, opened the criminal investigation and empaneled a grand jury to determine whether Bolton could be prosecuted for criminally disclosing classified information.
  • In June 2021, the Department of Justice, under new leadership, dropped its investigation and ended its attempt to hijack the proceeds from book sales.

    • Political Wire:

    Bolton, who broke sharply with Trump after leaving the White House in 2019, has long been in the former president’s crosshairs.

    Their first major clash came over his 2020 memoir, which the Trump administration claimed contained classified information. That fight led to a criminal probe that Bolton argued was retaliation for his criticism of Trump.

    The Biden administration eventually dropped the case.

    It’s unclear whether this new investigation is also tied to the book, though that remains the most obvious pretext.

    What’s clear is that Trump wasted no time moving against Bolton when he returned to power this January. He revoked Bolton’s Secret Service protection—despite an ongoing Iranian threat against him—and stripped his security clearance, citing the memoir.

    It’s easy to conclude that this new investigation is tied to Trump’s vendetta against Bolton.

    That was essentially confirmed by Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel who seemed to celebrate the raid this morning.