Of all the conservatives and former conservatives who defected from the Republican Party or from Trump’s orbit, John Bolton evokes the least emotional reaction from me.
A few come to mind whose defection was out of pure principle or intellectual consistency, and I actually admire those people if they have kept their feet on the ground and stuck firmly to their principles. You know, the opposite of people like David French, the evangelical who is all-in on alphabet ideology and abortion now. Or any of the Lincoln Project-types, who defected out of spite or saw an opportunity to cash in.
Bolton, though, is just a grey man, the kind of which you can find in any regime. He has an agenda, but that isn’t the same as having principles, and his loyalty is to that agenda, and he is utterly ruthless in pursuing it. I see him almost as more of a type than a complete person, so I just can’t get myself worked up about his actions any more than I can get angry at an obstacle in a road.
So it gives me no particular pleasure (or pain) to see that Bolton got caught doing something illegal, in the way it would evoke schadenfreude to see Anthony Fauci or Peter Strzok pay for their many crimes.
From Politico: ‘FBI says it found classified documents in John Bolton’s DC office; Court records show that records marked ‘secret’ were seized from the office of Trump’s former national security adviser.’ https://t.co/WEsdSO9bDK
— Byron York (@ByronYork) September 24, 2025
Some people in the media were deeply upset when the Trump administration reopened the criminal investigation into Bolton after the president returned to office, complaining that the motive was revenge. I didn’t have much of an opinion about that myself, because it was pretty obvious that the Biden administration dropped the investigation into Bolton’s use of classified documents for political reasons in the first place.
The evidence is piling up that Bolton — whose complaints about Trump’s handling of classified documents were bitter — appears to have broken the law regarding them.
FBI agents executing a search warrant at former national security adviser John Bolton’s downtown Washington office last month turned up documents marked as classified, according to a court filing released Tuesday.
A description of the documents gathered in the Aug. 22 search suggested they included materials that referenced weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. mission to the United Nations and records related to the U.S. government’s strategic communications.
The inventory by an FBI agent doesn’t specify the number of suspected classified documents. But it lists several collections or folders that were labeled “confidential” and some pages marked “secret.” The heading on at least one set marked “confidential” was redacted from the inventory, filed earlier this month in federal court in Washington.
The original investigation stemmed from Bolton’s violation of policies regarding publications of books by people who handle classified documents–they are supposed to be vetted to ensure that nothing secret is revealed–and the indication that he intentionally revealed secrets to bolster his arguments.
In Trump’s first term, Bolton faced a lawsuit claiming he included classified information in a book he wrote after leaving the administration. A federal judge warned publicly that the former White House official’s actions might have been criminal. However, a Justice Department probe did not lead to charges and was eventually dropped under the Biden administration in 2021.
It’s not known when the investigation restarted. Court filings indicate that investigators determined that Bolton’s AOL email account was hacked by a foreign entity, although details of the alleged hack and how the U.S. became aware of it remain unclear.
Redacted court filings related to the Washington search were released by Justice Department lawyers after several news organizations, including POLITICO, filed a formal motion asking for disclosure of the records. DOJ attorneys agreed to make public redacted versions of the inventory, search warrant and accompanying affidavit, but resisted blanket release of the information, citing a need to protect a national security investigation.
As indicated, a federal judge had already suggested that Bolton likely violated the law when publishing his book, so the original investigation was clearly not simply motivated by revenge. Picking it back up was a natural move, since the decision to drop the original investigation was almost certainly motivated by a desire to help an ally in the Biden administration’s war against Trump. After all, they were trying to get HIM on a classified documents charge, and Bolton was helping them do that in the public eye.
Bolton, as far as I can tell, is laser-focused on promoting an aggressive foreign policy, and his beef with Trump is that he is more a peacemonger than a warmonger. I don’t think he really cares about much more than killing people whom he thinks are America’s enemies, and he would be happy enough with Trump if he did more of that. He is less a sellout or a turncoat than a man obsessed with a mission, so schadenfreude seems to me to be wasted on him.
His crime is not malice, but obsession. He should be punished for breaking the law, of course, but that is a prudential decision based on the need to maintain the rules. If Adam Schiff goes down for his crimes, my glee would be inspired by a bad man who deserves to have a bad time of it, whatever the cause. I don’t feel a strong need to punish him for violating the federal mortgage laws; I want him punished because he is a malignant tumor on the body politic.
Bolton? He is a tool you use when necessary, and one you toss out when broken. There’s no point in getting emotional about his brokenness. One should never have expected loyalty to a president or an administration, or even principle. His loyalty is to a mission, and nothing else.
Well, the mission and his remarkable mustache. You have to admit that it is the one thing that gives him a spark of personality.
I doubt he will go to jail, but if the charges are proven, he will pay some price. No point in being happy or sad. He’s just a broken wrench.
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