The FBI executed a search warrant Friday morning at the home and office of John Bolton, the former national security adviser under President Donald Trump, as part of an ongoing investigation into alleged mishandling of classified documents.
The raid comes months after President Trump formally revoked Bolton’s security clearance in January, shortly after returning to office.
Bolton, who served from 2018 to 2019, has long been a vocal critic of Trump since their acrimonious split during the first administration.
Tensions intensified after Bolton’s 2020 memoir, which revealed behind-the-scenes accounts of Trump’s presidency and drew a strong rebuke from the former president.
Search Part of Probe into Classified Material
According to federal officials familiar with the matter, the FBI operation is part of a broader probe into whether Bolton improperly retained classified documents after his departure from the White House.
No arrests were made, and Bolton was not taken into custody following the raid.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on the ongoing investigation. As of Friday afternoon, neither Bolton nor his legal team had issued a public statement regarding the search.
President Trump, when asked about the raid during a press availability on Friday, said he had no prior knowledge of it.
“I know nothing about it. I just saw it this morning. They did a raid,” he told reporters. “He’s not a smart guy. But he could be very unpatriotic. I mean, we’re going to find out.”
Contentious History Between Bolton and Trump
John Bolton’s departure from the Trump White House in September 2019 marked the beginning of a highly public feud. While Bolton maintained he resigned, Trump insisted he had fired him.
The dispute escalated with the release of Bolton’s memoir, The Room Where It Happened, which portrayed Trump as erratic, uninformed, and primarily focused on his own political interests.
“There really isn’t any guiding principle that I was able to discern other than what’s good for Donald Trump’s reelection,” Bolton said in a June 2020 interview with ABC News.
He went further, accusing Trump of undermining U.S. national security with disorganized and self-centered decision-making.
Trump responded with a series of sharp attacks, dismissing the book as “lies & fake stories.”
In a June 18, 2020 post on social media, Trump referred to Bolton as “a disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war,” and claimed many of the book’s contents were “pure fiction.”
