FBI agents executed search warrants at John Bolton's suburban Maryland home and his Washington, D.C., office early in the morning, with Kash Patel posting praise on social media and President Trump disparaging Bolton after learning of the raid on television. The specific facts that led a judge to authorize the searches remain undisclosed, contributing to perceptions of politicized motives. The searches coincided with other national-security personnel moves: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth removed a senior DIA leader after analysts' assessments conflicted with presidential claims, and the Director of National Intelligence revoked dozens of security clearances for current and former officials.
The FBI's actions were hard not to read as payback for Bolton's years of criticism of the president, even as the facts that persuaded a judge to approve a search warrant remain unknown. That's the problem with a politicized legal system-even if an investigation is legitimate, it's easy to assume that its motives are corrupt. Trump has spent years vowing retribution against Bolton, particularly after Bolton published a 2020 memoir that portrayed the president as incompetent and out of his depth on foreign policy.
If this was revenge, it wasn't an isolated act. As agents were still packing up boxes of Bolton's effects, The Washington Post reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had pushed out yet another senior military officer, firing Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. In June, its analysts delivered a preliminary assessment that U.S. bombers had caused relatively limited damage to Iranian nuclear facilities, undercutting Trump's pronouncements that the sites were "obliterated."
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