I personally think John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s former national security advisor and now a caustic critic of his foreign policy, is an irascible and sanctimonious foreign policy hawk and warmonger. But whatever you think of Bolton, the retaliation Trump is dishing out to him should send chills down everyone’s spine. Shortly after taking office in January, Trump revoked Bolton’s security clearances and cancelled his security detail, despite credible threats against him from Iran — including an assassination plot. During the past few days, however, the Trump administration crossed the Rubicon: On Friday, the FBI raided Bolton’s home and office in what appears to be part of an investigation into whether he illegally possessed or shared classified information in connection to his memoir, which Trump tried to block from being published in 2020.
I’m not a betting woman, but odds are this investigation is transpiring under the Espionage Act, the law of choice for going after former government employees who have said things that embarrass the government, or even worse, expose its illegal and unethical conduct. The irony is that Trump himself was investigated under the Espionage Act for mishandling classified information. In December, I predicted he would soon deploy this law against his perceived enemies.
Here, the past is prologue. Back in 2020, then-Attorney General William Barr opened a criminal investigation into whether Bolton could be prosecuted for disclosing classified information in his book “The Room Where It Happened.” In June 2021, President Joe Biden’s Justice Department closed the investigation with no charges ever being brought. With this in mind, it’s hard to imagine that Bolton’s book didn’t go through pre-publication review for precisely the kind of classified information he is now suspected of mishandling.
Trump’s apparent resurrection of the case is both shocking and not surprising. It’s public knowledge that Trump is irked that the media often quotes, in his words, “fired losers and really dumb people like John Bolton.”
Trump’s apparent resurrection of the case is both shocking and not surprising. It’s public knowledge that Trump is irked that the media often quotes, in his words, “fired losers and really dumb people like John Bolton.” It’s also public that in April, the White House issued a presidential memorandum that claimed it would crack down on cases “where a Government employee discloses sensitive information for the purposes of personal enrichment or undermining our foreign policy, national security and government effectiveness.” Attorney General Pam Bondi repeated the threat and added, hyperbolically and erroneously, that “this conduct could properly be characterized as treasonous,” a crime that is punishable by death.
What is shocking is how glaringly pretextual and retaliatory the optics are. Bolton not only skewered Trump in his book, but he more recently criticized him over the Signalgate debacle. That’s where Mike Waltz, Trump’s recent national security advisor, unwittingly invited the editor of The Atlantic into an unsecured chat about real-time airstrikes in Yemen, an error that is still under investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general. It’s also stunning because Bolton has strong Republican credentials, extensive experience in government service and a reputation for being a straight shooter and rule-follower. He served in senior positions under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Trump. In these ways, Bolton is the anti-Trump: Smart, credentialed, disciplined and experienced.
The most shocking aspect of the Bolton raid, however, is its rank hypocrisy. Trump displayed flagrant indifference in his own handling of classified documents, including information about American nuclear programs, defense and weapons capability, attack vulnerabilities of the U.S. and its allies, and how the U.S. would retaliate. This is precisely the kind of national defense information for which lower-level government employees have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act for alleged retention and/or disclosure. Trump stashed documents in his bathroom, ballroom, bedroom and storage room at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate.
This was not a case of a president inadvertently having a stray classified document at home because he was working on his memoirs. It was deliberate, lazy, sloppy, self-interested and unapologetic, as was Trump’s brazen and bizarre assertion that he could declassify documents telepathically just by “thinking about it.”
Whatever Bolton may or may not have done with respect to his handling of closely-held information, it is worth remembering that Trump falsely claimed he was cooperating fully with the FBI and had turned over all documents sought by investigators when he had actually kept dozens of boxes casually strewn about his abode. After being given multiple chances to return those boxes to the National Archives, he did the polar opposite. Trump not only refused to return boxes upon boxes of sensitive and secret information for months on end, but he also allegedly obstructed justice by reportedly having others destroy that information and then lie about it. You don’t have to take my word for it. These were the conclusions of the Justice Department’s Special Counsel Robert Hur, a staunch Republican.
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As for the Bolton raid, in characteristic fashion, Trump denied that he had been briefed on it, but couldn’t help adding his animus: “I’m not a fan of John Bolton. He’s a real sort of lowlife…He’s not a smart guy. But he could be a very unpatriotic guy. I’m going to find out.” The president’s comments have created unfair pre-trial publicity that could actually undermine any eventual case against Bolton. Trump also made a confusing, factually false and contradictory statement: “I don’t want to know about it. It’s not necessary. I could know about [sic]. I could be the one starting it. I’m actually the chief law enforcement officer.”
This is just flat out wrong. If Trump were in fact the chief law enforcement officer, he would definitely know about what was going on. However, he’s not. That’s Pam Bondi’s job —even if she’s a sycophant — and it’s shocking he doesn’t know this or is choosing to willfully ignore it. Moreover, thanks to the resignation of President Richard Nixon and post-Watergate reforms, the Justice Department holds the notable, even if imperfect, distinction of being independent and apolitical. The president can’t order a federal law enforcement investigation into another person or group.
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We’ve already seen this scenario play out very publicly. Manhattan’s interim U.S. Attorney resigned rather than follow an order to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. The Justice Department tried an end-run by transferring the case to its Public Integrity Section. But lawyers in that section also resigned in protest.
Bolton looks like he is in for “punishment by process,” a term used in law, politics and civil liberties to describe how the process of being investigated and prosecuted becomes the punishment itself. Being on the receiving end of a federal criminal investigation destroys you personally, professionally and psychically — even if you eventually prevail. The stress, financial cost, reputational damage and years spent on the defensive are ruinous. Defendants find themselves both unemployed and unemployable, blacklisted, bankrupt and broken. Bolton has stronger armor than most people to resist these outcomes, but putting him through hell is all about revenge and has little to do with justice.
Trump is clearly amping up his retaliation and retribution game against the enemies of his fragile ego. Just ask former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Sen. Adam Schiff, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and former Acting Director of the Justice Department’s Office of Immigration Litigation Erez Reuveni.
If this lawfare isn’t aggressively reined in now by judges and Congress, it’s going to be a long and vicious three-and-a-half years.
