This morning, Donald Trump claimed he knew nothing about the raid on the Maryland home of his former National Security Adviser John Bolton. “I’m not a fan of John Bolton,” Trump said, calling him a “lowlife.” In that respect he agrees with many Democrats: After Trump fired Bolton, in 2019, Representative Adam Schiff of California (now a senator) said that one “should question John Bolton’s patriotism,” and Representative Nancy Pelosi called him a “disgrace.” In January, Trump pulled Bolton’s security detail, which had been in place due to credible threats by the Iranian government, which is also not a fan of John Bolton. Bolton’s neighbor Gerald Rogell told The New York Times that Bolton was “unfriendly.” He added, dryly and a little gratuitously, “John Bolton is not our favorite person.” If a terrible accident befalls Bolton, one should not rule out a Murder on the Orient Express scenario. Who did it? Maybe everyone.
Reports say the government is searching Bolton’s home and office to determine whether he mishandled or shared classified material. (The New York Times says the raid followed “intelligence collected overseas” by the CIA.) The investigation is therefore unlikely to be related to Bolton’s long-standing dispute with Trump over Bolton’s memoir, which he published in 2020 without waiting for government clearance. (Bolton alleged that Trump’s administration slow-rolled the review to block criticism of the president.) Bolton has, ironically enough, been a longtime pooh-pooher of accusations that the federal government classifies way too much material, and that that secrecy-bloat impedes transparency.
Bolton applies a lawyerly, punctilious zeal not only to his work but to many other aspects of his existence. Such people are not great at block parties. When you drop by to borrow sugar, they draft contracts with ruinous penalties and arbitration in the jurisdiction of Guantánamo Bay to ensure the return of their measuring cup. In my 2019 profile of Bolton, I recounted his argument across the deli counter at a Safeway, over whether he was owed a refund for a turkey he had not yet consumed. Although these born sticklers may not be great neighbors, they tend to be scrupulous about personal liability, especially when they know—as Bolton must—that the president is gunning for them.
FBI agents were seen entering Bolton’s home with cardboard boxes. I wonder what they walked out with. Bolton is not the type to stumble into a situation that he cannot litigate his way out of. That said, he is cocky, and his memory is brimming with so many secrets that even a cautious person could spill one in an unguarded moment.
FBI Director Kash Patel tweeted, in apparent reference to the raid, that “NO ONE is above the law.” Patel has also recently pledged to “de-weaponize the FBI,” in particular by purging it and its partner agencies of those who have claimed that Trump has colluded with Russia. Bolton, in this regard, should be safe. He has used Trump’s own language in describing the Robert Mueller investigation as a “witch hunt,” and he has consistently denigrated Trump since 2020, not for treason but for ignorance, sloth, and foreign-policy blunders. After last week’s Ukraine summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Bolton accused Trump of one of the worst sins one can commit in Trump land: being low-energy. He told CNN that Trump “looked very tired up there,” and said one should “reflect on what that means.”
Reflection is certainly in order, on the topic of what it means that Patel is investigating a former Trump official just as that defector is getting more mordant in his criticisms of his former boss. The pledge to “de-weaponize” the FBI would be more credible from a less vindictive administration, and one that had not spent its opening months purging apolitical staff. Until more information comes out about the warrant and the intelligence behind it, no one can say definitively whether today’s raid is due to Bolton’s status as critic, Bolton’s bad judgment or malfeasance, or nothing at all. All remain possible. A truly depoliticized Justice Department and intelligence community—less politicized than Trump’s, and also less politicized than recent Democrats’—would leave less doubt about the relative likelihood of each. But that is not the Justice Department currently in place.
