FBI raids home of John Bolton, former Trump adviser turned ardent critic

FBI agents were entering and leaving the former senior US official's home in the suburbs of Washington early Friday, an AFP reporter saw.

"NO ONE is above the law... FBI agents are on a mission," said Federal Police Director Kash Patel, a Donald Trump loyalist, on X, without specifying which case he was referring to.

Donald Trump has made much of his desire to investigate and prosecute his "enemies within." In 2020, he claimed that John Bolton should be "in jail" for writing a book about his time in the White House between 2018 and 2019.

Questioned by the press on Friday, the American president declared that he had not been informed by the FBI of this search, before launching several digs at his former advisor.

"I'm not a fan of John Bolton. He's really a nobody," he said.

"He's not a smart guy, but he could also be very unpatriotic, we'll see," added Donald Trump.

Documents classified as confidential

According to the New York Times and other US media, the search was ordered to determine whether John Bolton had shared or was in illegal possession of classified documents.

"The classified documents are certainly part of (the investigation), but I think there are broader concerns" about John Bolton, Vice President J.D. Vance told NBC News on Friday.

Donald Trump himself was prosecuted at the federal level for withholding classified documents after leaving office in 2021, and his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida was raided by the FBI, as he recalled to the press on Friday in the Oval Office.

Upon returning to the White House in January, the Republican billionaire signed an executive order accusing his former adviser of revealing "sensitive information from his time" at the White House.

He also deprived his former adviser of protection from the Secret Service, the agency responsible for protecting senior political figures in the United States, and cut off all his access to intelligence data.

John Bolton was reportedly the target of an assassination plot by Iran between 2021 and 2022, and he stated in January that "the threat remains." Tehran is said to have sought revenge for the death of its general Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in 2020 in a strike in Iraq ordered by President Trump.

With his face covered in a thick mustache, this 76-year-old Republican became internationally known as ambassador to the UN under President George W. Bush, during the Iraq War.

"Retaliatory Presidency"

After his dismissal by Donald Trump, he began to take a stand against the Republican. In a 2020 book, John Bolton described his former boss as "unfit" to lead the world's leading power.

Recently, he criticized the summit between the American president and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Alaska.

In an interview with ABC News last week, the former ambassador called the Republican's second term a "retaliatory presidency."

He also repeatedly criticized the appointment of Kash Patel to head the FBI, which he said "shows what Trump really wants, which is allegiance to Trump."

At the time of this appointment, elected Democrats had expressed strong opposition. Senator Dick Durbin expressed concern that this former federal prosecutor would use his new role to "get revenge on his political enemies."

On Friday, Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin, whose congressional district includes the city of Bethesda, denounced the search of John Bolton's home as a "disturbing" event.

"This appears to confirm Bolton's own prediction that if Donald Trump were to return to power, his administration would be consumed by the idea of ​​revenge and retaliation against those perceived as his political enemies," he told CNN.