Seven months before the FBI’s Friday morning raid on John Bolton’s home and office, Donald Trump revoked the former national security adviser’s clearances and took away his security detail. The president did so even though intelligence showed that the Iranians would love to see Bolton dead for helping orchestrate the killing of Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani.
Speaking to reporters on Friday afternoon, Trump made clear that he sees the raid as fair-game payback for the legal travails he endured during his years out of power. The president complained that FBI agents went through his son’s bedroom and his wife’s drawers when they searched Mar-a-Lago in 2022. “So I know the feeling,” he said.
The pursuit of 76-year-old Bolton underscores the danger of putting partisan hacks in top law enforcement jobs. The government needed to show probable cause to get a judge to sign the search warrant, so it’s possible there was a rock-solid predicate for the search. But Trump’s promises of retribution and revenge make the government’s motives suspect. So does FBI Director Kash Patel putting Bolton on a list of members of the “deep state” in his 2023 book “Government Gangsters.”
It is a valid fear that the case against Bolton is a fresh instance of the old Soviet saying, “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” It comes against the backdrop of federal investigators looking for dirt on other Trump critics: New York Attorney General Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California), former FBI director James B. Comey and former CIA director John Brennan.
Trump does not conceal his view that the Justice Department should maintain no independence whatsoever from the White House. On Friday, while wearing a hat proclaiming “TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING,” the president speculated that the search could turn up evidence that Bolton is “a very unpatriotic guy.” Trump added that he did not have advance knowledge of the search, although it would have been fine if he had because he is the nation’s chief law enforcement officer.
The administration appears to be relitigating a fight it lost five years ago when the Justice Department tried unsuccessfully to stop Bolton from publishing his tell-all memoir about his tenure as national security adviser. Bolton emphatically denied that the book, based on notes he had taken, contained classified material. After a career White House staffer said Bolton had made the necessary edits to get the green light, the national security adviser who succeeded Bolton ordered an additional clearance review by a Trump loyalist.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth had harsh words for Bolton in 2020, even as he allowed him to publish: “Bolton has gambled with the national security of the United States,” he wrote. “He has exposed his country to harm and himself to civil (and potentially criminal) liability.”
Subsequently, under Attorney General William P. Barr, the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation, convened a grand jury and issued subpoenas regarding whether Bolton had mishandled classified material. But the investigation was closed without charges during the Biden administration. Some sources told The Post the investigation that prompted Friday’s search is focused on the book, but at least one other said it’s a broader inquiry.
Trump hardly has the moral high ground in any discussion about the handling of classified material, but accusing others of what he himself has been accused of has long been part of his M.O. During his decade as the dominant figure in American life, Trump has ushered in an elevated baseline of bipartisan cynicism. There is little pretense that Lady Justice is blind.
The president has steadily eroded norms built up during the post-Watergate era. Some Democrats were too willing to disregard those same norms because they were determined to get Trump by whatever means necessary. Now, Trump is more powerful than ever. His weaponization of government seems destined to fuel a protracted tit-for-tat cycle.
Consistent principles must be enforced against members of both parties, but how? Courts can help, as illustrated Thursday by the New York appellate panel decision to void an excessive half-billion-dollar judgment against Trump. Still, proving malicious or selective prosecution is exceedingly difficult. Rebalancing the scales of justice requires independent-minded prosecutors to employ forbearance. Just because someone can be charged with a crime does not mean they should be.
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