Shortly before 7:00 a.m. Friday morning, the FBI and Montgomery County police were seen at the Bethesda home of John Bolton, who served as national security advisor for part of Donald Trump’s first term. Montgomery County police sealed off the street on which Bolton lives while an unmarked black SUV parked in front of Bolton’s house. Montgomery County police confirmed that they were on site in support of the FBI.
Lawfare’s Ben Wittes was on site, livestreaming on Substack.
Following THE BULWARK’S initial reporting, Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post reported the FBI had conducted a “raid” at 7:12 a.m.
Bolton was the target of an investigation at the end of Trump’s first term for allegedly disclosing classified information in his 2020 memoir, The Room Where It Happened.
A brief refresher:
Bolton served as Trump’s third national security advisor—following the brief stint of Mike Flynn and the stormy tenure of H.R. McMaster. Bolton succeeded McMaster on April 9, 2018 and remained national security advisor until he resigned on September 10, 2019.
After leaving the Trump administration, he wrote a book about his tenure.
Per government requirements, Bolton submitted the book manuscript to the National Security Council for pre-publication review, a process designed to ensure that former government employees do not inadvertently publish classified information. The review process delayed the book’s publication.
On April 27, 2020, after a lengthy negotiation with Ellen Knight, the senior director for records access and information security management at the NSC, Bolton claimed that Knight gave oral approval to move forward with publication.
But on May 2, 2020, the NSC’s senior director for intelligence began a “supplemental” review of the manuscript. The publication date was delayed again.
Bolton had given his publisher permission to move ahead with publication while the Ellis review was still underway.
Bolton’s book had already been printed and bound, and members of the media had obtained advance copies when, on June 17, the government sought an injunction to prevent its release.
President Trump then attempted to have courts strip Bolton of all proceeds from book sales.
The Trump administration initial civil action, U.S. v. Bolton, was followed by an attempt to pursue criminal charges against Bolton.
In the fall of 2020, as the presidential election neared a close, Trump’s DOJ head for national security matters, John Demers, opened the criminal investigation and empaneled a grand jury to determine whether Bolton could be prosecuted for criminally disclosing classified information.
In June 2021, the Department of Justice, under new leadership, dropped its investigation and ended its attempt to hijack the proceeds from book sales.
In theory, the statute of limitations for criminally disclosing classified information is five years.
Trump terminated Bolton’s security clearance on January 20 as one of his first acts in office. He also immediately withdrew the government security detail that had been protecting Bolton, who had been the target of an assassination plot arranged by the Iranian government. Bolton was also named on the “Members of the Executive Branch Deep State” list in the book Government Gangsters published in 2023 by now-FBI Director Kash Patel.
Three minutes after the raid commenced, Patel cryptically tweeted:
More to come as the story develops. Join Bulwark+.
Updated at 7:24 a.m. EDT with chronology of the previous legal fights surrounding Bolton’s book.
Updated at 7:32 a.m. EDT with Patel tweet.
Updated at 7:34am with New York Post story.
Updated at 8:03am to reflect that the New York Post photos were not taken this morning.
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