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Law enforcement personnel were spotted Friday outside the Washington-area residence belonging to longtime Republican figure John Bolton, a critic of President Donald Trump before and after spending 16 months in his first administration.
Footage from multiple U.S. media outlets, and a livestream from the website Lawfare, showed a presence of several vehicles, with some individuals wearing clothing with FBI logos, at the Bethesda, Md., residence.
Bolton was spotted Friday morning standing in the lobby of the Washington building where he keeps an office and talking to two people with “FBI” visible on their vests, according to the Associated Press. He left a few minutes later and appeared to have gone upstairs in the building, the AP reported.
“NO ONE is above the law … @FBI agents on mission,” wrote FBI Director Kash Patel, without mentioning Bolton, in an X post shortly after 7 a.m. Patel’s message was reposted by a White House account, as well as by Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The Justice Department had no official comment to the Associated Press.
Bolton, 76, served in the administration of George W. Bush as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Earlier in his career, he served in various capacities in the Republican administrations of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.
Trump, at an event in Washington, D.C., on Friday morning, told reporters he was not aware of any investigation beyond media reporting.
“He could be a very unpatriotic guy. We’re going to find out,” said Trump.
Judge rebuked Bolton in book battle
Bolton was named the third national security adviser of Trump’s high-turnover first administration, serving from March 2018 to September 2019.
“I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration,” Trump said upon Bolton’s departure. Since then, he has repeatedly referred to Bolton as “one of the dumbest people in government” in multiple social media posts.
CBC News Network’s Aarti Pole speaks with Former U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton
Inside the administration, per multiple reports and a book written by Bolton, he advocated caution on the president’s whirlwind rapprochement with North Korea and against Trump’s decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria. Bolton was also opposed to Trump’s plan, latter scrapped, to bring Taliban negotiators to Camp David to complete a peace deal in Afghanistan.
Trump’s White House in 2020 sought a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against the publication of Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, alleging it contained classified information and threatened national security. The government argued Bolton hadn’t sought the proper review process before the book published by Simon & Schuster went to the printing presses.
A federal judge said an injunction was warranted, but that “Bolton’s unilateral conduct raises grave national security concerns.” U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth wrote in his ruling that Bolton had subjected “himself to civil (and potentially criminal) liability.”
A few months after Lamberth’s ruling, a National Security Council government classification expert raised allegations that the process had been politicized, accusing White House aides of making false assertions that Bolton had revealed classified information.
Bolton is a frequent presence on broadcast news channels, including CBC News Network, providing analysis. This week, he gave his thoughts on the recent flurry of diplomatic talks concerning the Ukraine war involving Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Western leaders.
On his 2020 book tour, which included an interview with CBC News, he portrayed Trump as a distracted leader not concerned with the finer details of policy, and a president who favoured a transactional, personal approach with foreign leaders.
The CurrentJohn Bolton on Trump & Trudeau, Huawei and the president’s bid for re-election
U.S. President Donald Trump tried to block its release, but former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s memoir, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, was published Tuesday. He spoke with The Current’s Matt Galloway in his first Canadian interview.
Retribution campaign promised
Trump himself was indicted over improper handling of classified information, and was alleged to have documents bearing top secret classifications at his Florida estate. But that investigation was stopped by a federal judge — originally appointed to the bench by Trump — and a planned appeal was essentially rendered moot by Trump’s election win last November.
Bolton and other first Trump administration officials saw their security clearances and Secret Service protection rescinded in January.
Patel, a vocal Trump supporter during the Biden presidency, denied having an “enemies list” in his Senate confirmation hearings earlier this year, despite having listed dozens of officials including Bolton under an appendix titled “Members of the Executive Branch Deep State,” in his 2023 book, Government Gangsters.
On the campaign trail, Trump promised a second administration that would include retribution, and law enforcement officials and legislators who have previously led or participated in investigations into Trump’s business and political activities are increasingly under scrutiny themselves.
Trump and Justice Department officials have alleged — in writing and public statements, though not through formal charges or presenting any evidence — that Letitia James, Adam Schiff and Lisa Cook have engaged in mortgage fraud.
James, New York state’s attorney general, oversaw a Trump civil fraud case, Schiff is a prominent Democrat who has publicly criticized Trump’s dealings with Russia and Ukraine, and Cook is a member of the Federal Reserve Board, whose decisions on interest rates have angered Trump.
Former FBI director James Comey, who was fired in 2017 just weeks after confirming an investigation was underway into Russian interference in the 2016 election, was questioned this year by Secret Service agents, ostensibly over a social media post.
The Trump administration announced this week that it would rescind the security clearances of 37 current and former national security officials, including some had worked on issues related to Russian threats to elections in 2016 and 2020, an issue that has long provoked Trump’s ire.
Trump has argued that the administrations of Barack Obama and Joe Biden were staffed with “deep state” actors who malignly investigated him. Democrats countered criticism of a “weaponized” Justice Department in the Biden administration by pointing to the fact that Democrats were indicted for alleged wrongdoing — including lawmakers Bob Menendez and Henry Cuellar, and Hunter Biden, the ex-president’s son.