The FBI launched a raid Friday morning into the home and office of John Bolton — President Donald Trump’s national security advisor from 2018 and 2019 — months after Trump yanked Bolton’s security clearance in January upon taking office.
The two men have a long history of trading barbs following Bolton’s exit from Trump’s first administration — all of which escalated after Bolton sought to publish a memoir in 2020 that included some unflattering details about his time in the White House.
While Trump has labeled Bolton a ‘wacko’ and a ‘dope,’ Bolton has had his fair share of harsh words for the president.
‘I don’t think he’s fit for office,’ Bolton said in an interview with ABC News in June 2020, ahead of his memoir’s release. ‘I don’t think he has the competence to carry out the job.’
‘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 at the time. ‘I think he was so focused on the reelection that longer-term considerations fell by the wayside.’
Bolton also characterized Trump as lacking focus on policy while being very fixated on himself — to the detriment of national security matters.
‘His policymaking is so incoherent, so unfocused, so unstructured, so wrapped around his own personal political fortunes, that mistakes are being made that will have grave consequences for the national security of the United States,’ Bolton also said in an ABC interview in June 2020.
The first Trump administration sought to block the release of Bolton’s memoir, ‘The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,’ and asserted it contained classified material.
The book alleged that Trump ‘pleaded’ Chinese President Xi Jinping to support Trump’s reelection campaign, and called the president ‘stunningly uninformed.’
While the Justice Department attempted to prevent its publication on the grounds that the book disclosed classified matters pertaining to U.S. intelligence sources and methods, a federal judge signed off on the publication of the book, which ultimately was published June 23, 2020.
Meanwhile, Trump discredited Bolton’s assertions included in the book, and hurled his own insults back at Bolton.
‘Many of the ridiculous statements he attributes to me were never made, pure fiction,’ Trump said in a social media post June 18, 2020. ‘Just trying to get even for firing him like the sick puppy he is!’
‘Wacko John Bolton’s ‘exceedingly tedious’(New York Times) book is made up of lies & fake stories. Said all good about me, in print, until the day I fired him,’ Trump said in a separate social media post on June 18, 2020. ‘A disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war. Never had a clue, was ostracized & happily dumped. What a dope!’
Bolton departed his post at the White House in September 2019. While Bolton said that he left due to his own volition, Trump claimed that he fired Bolton.
Bolton was not arrested or taken into custody following the raid on his home and office Friday.
Trump told reporters Friday that he had no knowledge of the raid and learned about it watching TV.
‘He’s a, not a smart guy,’ Trump said Friday. ‘But he could be a very unpatriotic. I mean, we’re going to find out. I know nothing about it. I just saw it this morning. They did a raid.’