FBI agents searched the Maryland home and Washington office of former Donald Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton as part of a renewed criminal investigation into the potential mishandling of classified information in his 2020 book, people familiar with the matter said.
CNN observed FBI personnel at Bolton’s house in the Washington, DC, area on the morning of Friday, August 22. The federal agents were seen speaking to a person on the porch of the house, and at least four to six agents were seen entering the property.
Bolton served as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser in his first term, 2019, but the president fired him, and the two have been foes since. Trump previously threatened to throw Bolton in jail over his 2020 book, which was critical of the US president’s foreign policy knowledge, and the Justice Department investigated him in Trump’s first term, CNN said. That probe was closed under President Joe Biden.
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‘I know nothing about it’
Asked about the search of Bolton’s properties, 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.
Denying the search was politically motivated, Vice President JD Vance later said in an interview for Meet the Press with Kristen Welker that “classified documents are certainly part of it, but I think that there’s a broad concern about, about Ambassador Bolton.”
“If they ultimately bring a case, it will be because they determine that he has broken the law,” Vance 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. Bolton’s harshly critical book, “The Room Where It Happened,” portrayed Trump as grossly ill-informed about foreign policy and said he “saw conspiracies behind rocks, and remained stunningly uninformed on how to run the White House, let alone the huge federal government.” According to the AP, Trump responded by slamming Bolton as a “crazy” warmonger who would have led the country into “World War Six.”
