By Allan Lengel
The FBI raid Friday on the suburban Maryland home and D.C. office of John Bolton, a former Trump adviser, is triggering strong responses inside and outside the Beltway.
The Washington Post editorial page, which has generally been a critic of President Donald Trump, wrote an editorial titled: “FBI raid targeting Bolton crosses a line in the Trump revenge campaign.”
The editorial says:
Seven months before the FBI’s Friday morning raid on John Bolton’s home and office, Donald Trump revoked the former national security adviser’s clearances and took away his security detail. The president did so even though intelligence showed that the Iranians would love to see Bolton dead for helping orchestrate the killing of Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani.
Speaking to reporters on Friday afternoon, Trump made clear that he sees the raid as fair-game payback for the legal travails he endured during his years out of power. The president complained that FBI agents went through his son’s bedroom and his wife’s drawers when they searched Mar-a-Lago in 2022. “So I know the feeling,” he said.
The pursuit of 76-year-old Bolton underscores the danger of putting partisan hacks in top law enforcement jobs. The government needed to show probable cause to get a judge to sign the search warrant, so it’s possible there was a rock-solid predicate for the search. But Trump’s promises of retribution and revenge make the government’s motives suspect. So does FBI Director Kash Patel putting Bolton on a list of members of the “deep state” in his 2023 book “Government Gangsters.”
It is a valid fear that the case against Bolton is a fresh instance of the old Soviet saying, “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” It comes against the backdrop of federal investigators looking for dirt on other Trump critics: New York Attorney General Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California), former FBI director James B. Comey and former CIA director John Brennan.The pursuit of 76-year-old Bolton underscores the danger of putting partisan hacks in top law enforcement jobs. The government needed to show probable cause to get a judge to sign the search warrant, so it’s possible there was a rock-solid predicate for the search. But Trump’s promises of retribution and revenge make the government’s motives suspect. So does FBI Director Kash Patel putting Bolton on a list of members of the “deep state” in his 2023 book “Government Gangsters.”
It is a valid fear that the case against Bolton is a fresh instance of the old Soviet saying, “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” It comes against the backdrop of federal investigators looking for dirt on other Trump critics: New York Attorney General Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California), former FBI director James B. Comey and former CIA director John Brennan.
