CNN
CNN
By Evan Perez, Kristen Holmes, Michael Callahan, Shania Shelton, Adam Cancryn, CNN
(CNN) — The FBI conducted a court-authorized search Friday at former national security adviser John Bolton’s home and office as part of a renewed investigation into whether he disclosed classified information in his 2020 book, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The investigative step immediately drew criticism that President Donald Trump was using the muscle of the US government to target a political foe, though the specific basis for the searches was not clear.
Bolton served as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser in his first term, but the president fired him in 2019 and the two have been sharply at odds ever since. Trump had previously threatened to jail Bolton over the 2020 book, which was critical of Trump’s foreign policy knowledge, and the Justice Department investigated him in Trump’s first-term. That probe was closed under President Joe Biden.
Since Trump’s return to office, Bolton has emerged as one of the most vocal critics of his foreign policy and ongoing efforts to end the war in Ukraine, often deriding the president for his perceived deference to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
CNN observed FBI personnel at Bolton’s house in the Washington, DC, area on Friday morning. They were seen speaking to a person on the porch of the house, and at least four to six agents were seen going inside. Some of the agents took bags out of the vehicles to bring inside, but nothing was seen coming out of the residence.
The FBI also was searching Bolton’s office on Friday morning, according to a source. CNN saw several unmarked federal vehicles outside the building in downtown Washington.
While the searches stemmed from the Justice Department reopening the years-old investigation involving the book, investigators are also exploring other possible leaks as a form of “weaponization,” a source said.
Asked about the search on Friday, Trump told reporters he knew “nothing about it.” He added that he expected the Justice Department to brief him likely later in the day and suggested he had the power to initiate law enforcement moves.
“I don’t want to know about it. It’s not necessary. I could know about it. I could be the one starting it, and I’m actually the chief law enforcement officer. But I feel that it’s better this way,” he said, before calling Bolton a “low life.”
“When I hired him, he served a good purpose, because, as you know, he was one of the people that forced Bush to do the ridiculous bombings in the Middle East. Bolton, he wants to always kill people, and he’s very bad at what he does, but he worked out great for me,” Trump said.
Vice President JD Vance later said in an interview for Meet the Press with Kristen Welker that “classified documents are certainly part” of the motivation behind the investigation, “but I think that there’s a broad concern about, about Ambassador Bolton.”
Vance denied that the search was politically motivated, characterizing it as part of an evidence-gathering operation “driven by the law and not by politics.”
“If they ultimately bring a case, it will be because they determine that he has broken the law,” he said. “We’re going to be deliberate about that, because we don’t think that we should throw people — even if they disagree with us politically, maybe especially if they disagree with us politically — you shouldn’t throw people willy-nilly in prison.”
Reached by CNN earlier on Friday, Bolton said he was unaware of the FBI activity and was looking into it further. His attorney didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The search at Bolton’s house was first reported by the New York Post. The FBI declined to comment on it.
Trump’s fraught history with Bolton
Trump has repeatedly gone after his former national security adviser while in office, including most recently saying this month that the media was “constantly quoting fired losers and really dumb people like John Bolton.”
The president also terminated Bolton’s Secret Service detail within hours of starting his second term in January.
During his first term, the president threatened to jail Bolton after his 2020 book, “The Room Where It Happened,” claimed Trump was woefully under-informed on matters of foreign policy and obsessed with shaping his media legacy. The book also reported that Trump asked the leaders of Ukraine and China to help him win the 2020 election.
The book included material that initially was cleared for publication by career officials at the White House, but Trump political appointees sought to overturn that approval.
The Justice Department investigated Bolton over the possibility that he “unlawfully disclosed classified information” in his memoir, though officials under former President Joe Biden closed the investigation and dropped a related lawsuit in 2021 connected to the publication of the book.
Bolton, in turn, has emerged as one of Trump’s harshest critics, frequently questioning his fitness for office and decision-making while deriding his approach to foreign policy. A longtime foreign policy hawk, he has taken particular aim at Trump’s efforts to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine, saying earlier this week that Putin was “working Trump over.”
In the wake of Trump’s face-to-face meeting with the Russian president last week, Bolton said on CNN that “Putin clearly won.”
“Meetings will continue because Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize, but I don’t see these talks making any progress,” he wrote in a Friday post on X, just hours before the FBI arrived at his home.
Bolton last year had also led a campaign against FBI Director Kash Patel’s candidacy to run the agency, at one point penning a scathing op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that was headlined “Kash Patel Doesn’t Belong at the FBI.”
“The Senate should reject this nomination 100-0,” he told CNN in December.
Patel in his 2023 book “Government Gangsters” had listed Bolton among more than 50 current and former US officials that he claimed were a “dangerous threat to democracy.”
Trump and his government have carried out a campaign of retribution in recent months against a wide swath of the president’s perceived political enemies, ranging from former Trump officials to members of Congress to the prosecutors who brought cases against the president while he was out of office.
The White House stripped Bolton and a handful of other former officials of their security detail and clearances shortly after Trump took office in January. The president later ordered Justice Department investigations of two first-term appointees-turned critics, former Homeland Security official Miles Taylor and former former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency chief Christopher Krebs.
Taylor penned a high-profile anonymous op-ed in 2018 criticizing Trump and depicting chaos within his White House, and he has since emerged as a vocal critic. Krebs was fired in late 2020 after refusing to back up Trump’s unfounded claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
The FBI, meanwhile, launched investigations earlier this summer into former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey. Trump at the time said he wasn’t aware of the probes, but called them “very dishonest people.”
Last week, Patel declassified and released internal FBI interview notes from a former House Intelligence Committee staffer who first accused former Rep. Adam Schiff in 2017 of directing illegal leaks of classified information about Trump and Russia, in an escalation of Trump’s long-standing feud with Schiff.
The Justice Department also opened a grand jury investigation into New York Attorney General Letitia James this month over the civil actions she brought against Trump and the National Rifle Association.
Public nature of FBI search
The public nature of the FBI search on Friday at Bolton’s house – with agents wearing prominently identifiable “FBI” jackets while entering and exiting the house throughout the morning and key officials appearing to telegraph it on social media – has already led neighbors and friends of Bolton to say the search may be related to political retribution.
Top FBI officials posted on social media Friday morning just after 7 am. FBI Director Kash Patel wrote on X, “NO ONE is above the law … @FBI agents on mission.” The FBI’s co-deputy director Dan Bongino posted, “Public corruption will not be tolerated.”
Vance and Attorney General Pam Bondi also reposted Patel’s comment, with Bondi adding, “America’s safety isn’t negotiable. Justice will be pursued. Always.”
If the officials are cryptically referring to Bolton, it would be a notable departure of the Bureau’s practice of not commenting publicly on investigations, especially as FBI agents are still at the scene.
For instance, the hours-long FBI search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago for classified records in 2022 was conducted with officials in plain clothes, and with the public largely unaware of the search until it was nearly concluded. Patel has since called the Mar-a-Lago search a “total weaponization and politicization by the FBI and DOJ.”
Trump was indicted by a grand jury for mishandling several national security documents he retained after his first term in office, keeping boxes of classified records in a bathroom, a ballroom and other rooms at his Florida resort, until a Florida-based judge dismissed the case in 2024.
Bolton, a longtime conservative who had previously served in the Reagan and both Bush administrations, has been a political foe of Trump’s since he left the White House in the first term.
This story and headline have been updated with additional information.
CNN’s Katelyn Polantz and Kylie Atwood contributed to this report.
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