WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI on Friday searched the Maryland home and Washington office of former Trump administration national security adviser John Bolton as part of a criminal investigation into the potential mishandling of classified information, a person familiar with the matter said.
Bolton emerged as an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump after being fired in 2019 and feuded with the first Trump administration over a scathing book he wrote documenting his time in the White House.
He was not in custody Friday and has not been charged with any crimes, said the person, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation by name and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.
The searches, seemingly the most significant public step the Justice Department has taken against a perceived enemy of the president, are likely to elicit fresh alarm that the Trump administration is using its law enforcement powers to go after the Republican’s foes. The searches of Bolton’s home and office come as the Trump administration has taken steps to examine the activities of other critics, including by authorizing a grand jury investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe that dogged Trump for much of his first term.
They also unfolded against the backdrop of a 2022 search for classified documents at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, an action that produced since-dismissed criminal charges but remains the source of outrage for the president and supporters who insist he was unjustly targeted despite the retrieval of top-secret records. Current FBI Director Kash Patel, who included Bolton on a list of “members of the Executive Branch Deep State” in a 2023 book, said in a Fox News Channel interview this week that the Mar-a-Lago search represented a “total weaponization and politicization” of the bureau.
In an ABC News interview this month, Bolton was asked about whether he was worried about the Trump administration taking action against him. Bolton said Trump had “already come after” him by taking away his security detail, and he added: “I think it is a retribution presidency.”
Bolton was not home for the search of his home, but after it started, he was spotted Friday morning standing in the lobby of the Washington building where he keeps an office and talking to two people with “FBI” visible on their vests. He left a few minutes later and appeared to have gone upstairs in the building. Agents were seen taking bags into the office building through a back entrance.
Messages left with a spokesperson for Bolton were not immediately returned, and a lawyer who has represented Bolton had no immediate comment.
The White House referred questions about the probe to the FBI. The Justice Department also had no comment, but leaders appeared to cryptically refer to the search of Bolton's home in a series of social media posts Friday morning.
Patel posted on X: “NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission.” Attorney General Pam Bondi shared his post, adding: “America’s safety isn’t negotiable. Justice will be pursued. Always.”
The Justice Department is separately conducting mortgage fraud investigations into Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought a civil fraud lawsuit against Trump and his company, and ex-Trump prosecutor Jack Smith faces an investigation from an independent watchdog office. Schiff and James have vigorously denied any wrongdoing through their lawyers.
Bolton served as Trump’s third national security adviser for 17 months and clashed with him over Iran, Afghanistan and North Korea. He faced scrutiny during the first Trump administration over a book he wrote about his time in government that officials argued disclosed classified information, but the Justice Department in 2021 abandoned its lawsuit and dropped a separate grand jury investigation.
Bolton’s lawyers have said he moved forward with the book after a White House National Security Council official, with whom Bolton had worked for months, said the manuscript no longer contained classified information.
The handling of classified information by top government officials has been a politically loaded topic in recent years. Besides Trump, the Justice Department also investigated whether then-President Joe Biden, a Democrat, mishandled classified information after serving as vice president in the Obama administration, and the FBI also recovered what it said were classified documents from the home of former Trump Vice President Mike Pence. Neither man was charged.
Trump, on his first day back in office this year, revoked the security clearances of more than four dozen former intelligence officials, including Bolton. Bolton was also among a group of former Trump officials whose security details were canceled by Trump earlier this year.
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.”
Trump responded by slamming Bolton as a “crazy” war-monger who would have led the country into “World War Six.”
Bolton served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush and also held positions in President Ronald Reagan's administration. He considered running for president in 2012 and 2016.
In 2022, an Iranian operative was charged in a plot to kill Bolton in presumed retaliation for a 2020 U.S. airstrike that killed the country’s most powerful general. Bolton had by then left the Trump administration, but he tweeted, “Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran.”
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Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price, Nathan Ellgren, Lindsay Whitehurst, Alanna Durkin Richer and Jill Colvin contributed to this report.
