The FBI raided the D.C.-area home of former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton on Friday.
According to the New York Post’s Caitlin Doornbos, who initially broke the story, “Federal agents went to Bolton’s house in Bethesda, Md., at 7 a.m. in an investigation ordered by FBI Director Kash Patel, a Trump administration official told The Post.” Per Fox News, agency officials were later spotted at Bolton’s Washington, D.C. office “removing boxes and Bolton was seen in the lobby.”
Patel seemingly confirmed the raid in an early Friday morning post. At roughly the same time the raid reportedly took place, the FBI director wrote on X, “NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission.”
In a Friday morning post quoting Patel’s statement, FBI Co-Deputy Director Dan Bongino also wrote, “Public corruption will not be tolerated.”
Sources who reportedly spoke with the Post and other outlets maintain that the searches are related to Bolton’s alleged possession of classified documents. A “senior US official” told Doornbos the raid is specifically related to a probe “first launched years ago, but the Biden administration shut … down ‘for political reasons.’”
“The related investigation began in 2020, according to the official — the same year Trump’s first Justice Department launched a criminal inquiry into Bolton’s alleged disclosure of national secrets in his book, ‘The Room Where It Happened,’” Doornbos wrote. “That investigation came after President Trump fought to quash its publication over its inclusion of national secrets — saying Bolton broke an NDA signed as a condition of his employment.”
Bolton has reportedly not been arrested or charged with any crimes as of this article’s publication.
Since his dismissal from the first Trump administration, Bolton has remained a vocal critic of his former boss. The former national security adviser did not hesitate to attack Trump following the Biden Justice Department’s raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate in summer 2022.
Appearing on MSNBC in August 2022 to discuss the matter, Bolton expressed his belief that Trump didn’t “care[] about the classification system” or “appreciate[] the sensitivity of this information.”
“[H]e liked cool things, he saw things … so he wanted to take them, and he was pretty much able to take them and not just on classified information matters, on all kinds of things that crossed his desk,” Bolton said. “Some days, he liked to eat a lot of french fries, some days he took classified documents. He wanted them. Why did he want them? Because he could get them.”
Bolton again appeared on the network nearly a year later to criticize Trump over the classified documents case. Speaking to former Biden Press Secretary and MSNBC host Jen Psaki, the former Trump official claimed the president “sometimes … liked to retain things” — an alleged pattern he said was “very disturbing.”
“It became the practice just to make sure that we got them back in as many cases as we could. Obviously, we failed in many cases,” Bolton said.
The charges against Trump stemming from the Biden DOJ’s classified documents lawfare were ultimately tossed in July 2024 by a Florida-based federal judge, who found that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s appointment in the probe was unconstitutional.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
